Minikui
by Antimony Sulfide
Summary: Hell must have frozen. Rated for cursing. Please, please review...?
1. Default Chapter

I suppose I'd have to call this…um…cynical. There is some humor, a poor attempt at horror, and a purely physical romance that develops out of this, all the result of too many dark novels, inane TV plots (and few I might add! Maybe a spice or two of the productions of Mr. Chris Carter and like activity from…I really haven't watched anything lately that could influence me, outside of Farscape??? Nah. The show basically scares me.) , Mr. Terry Pratchett's Discworld (If you haven't read it, read it. I trust that you will find the writing decent, and it's mainly humor. Hey, it's about three thousand times better than this) and some old-fashioned anime. Splice them all together and the combination avails a gruesome globule of truck (Read Longstreet! He's sly, bewitchingly mischievous; annoyingly cheeky, but the 'truck' is well worth it!) That cannot be classified on any modern or past scale—ultimately a rather failed experiment with the powers of literary satire, and a most aborted experiment regarding horror fiction, which fortunately for you I only sometimes write. It isn't very kitschy like Final Fantasy, so I guess you could say that the plot is OoC. Not only that, but I have adhered to a more vernacular writing style as I worked on this series, completely negligible of some more florid emotive elements in an engrossing writing hobby. In this, I suppose that my style, not mentioned as an insult against the author, is something akin to Aelfric's (Mandeville's Travels)—simple and vacant, that is. In FF7's case, it should've been more like Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged maybe, due to the trains and the message of Objectivism. Aaaah. What can one say? 

CHORUS: It should have been euthanized for the sake of morale.

Synopsis: A specimen with Pre-Jenova cellular structure is found, but it also contains traces of human DNA. Having been separated for months, and having heard rumors of Cloud Strife's suicide, the old group reunites leaderless in Neo-Midgar, and learns of Project Imogen, the 189,000 year old mummy, predating any Paleolithic age the Cetra may have gone through. 

Neo-Midgar; a city all too common with the root of its name, has its own form of justice and is clearly the home base for a myriad of dislocated Turks, and a breeding ground for new ones. 

The mummy, worked on by previously by irrepressibly devious doctors Gast and Hojo, can be activated, and could trigger a global destruction that cannot be reversed, and yet, unaware of its capabilities, still others beg the question of its identity. Is it human, another victim of Hojo's experimentation, or is it merely an imp of the perverse? 

CAUTION: Language is runabout, divertive, and a little bit shy of the point, because to summarize, I can't write. My style is based around horror fiction and gothic poetry, so the reader should be wary of a story laden in incompleteness and imprecise plot. That, and I haven't had the care/time to really edit it; I gave it a sort of once-over and that's about all the TLC it shall get from me, infernal thing it is. (*Stabs it with really, REALLY big knife*), and there is a rather strong role for Vincent in this story, although I portray him as a gung ho intimidator and scoundrel (his Turk years, if anyone's asking). Yuffie has a somewhat larger role as well, but they're not a romantic couple…err; they aren't going to be. (Confusion…lost total sight of the story itself…mucking with the lives of someone else's characters…) …but **NO**! There _isn't_ any romance in this (ahahaha…). If you have any qualms with the arrangement, you shall have to understand that it is all really the product of the certified. The gods of buckwheat tea and potato-based nail polish remover play pinochle with many a mind in here as well. As a final warning, Cid Highwind has taken on some of the attributes of a surly Irish-American comedian, perfectly by accident.

RATING: Oh, I would agree upon an R for most of it. That is, of course, meaning that I wouldn't want to warp a young child's mind forever with this if I were you. Try Lewis Carroll; certainly a better author and his works do a much more effective task.

Musing: With the common denotation of spangling, why would someone be proud of a song about patchwork? Welll…I for one don't have the answer, but in the context of FF7, it thoroughly opened a can of whoop-arse on an entire civilization. Ahem…rogue blondes wipe out people. (Why? Why Hironobu? Why???? *Strikes a holier-than-thou pose*)

DISCLAIMER: Ain't mine. Wish I wasn't so unoriginal—that way, they _could_ have been mine.

Chapter One: Ululation 

"Some say the world will end in fire,

Others ice.

From what I've tasted of desire,

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if I was to perish twice,

From what I also know of hate,

I must admit that ice,

Is also great,

And would suffice."

—Robert Frost, "Fire and Ice"

"And the music's not immortal; but the world has made it sweet"—Alfred Noyes, "The Barrel-Organ"

"Others may sing of the wine and the wealth of the mirth,

The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;

Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth!"—John Masefield, "A Consecration"

"Who's to say where the wind will take you?"—U2

A Proposition

                Tifa strode through the streets of the sector five slums, a green and black miasma swirling around her narrow form. She was making her way through the remaining strips of broken down tenements toward a modest apartment she had bought just after the rubble had been cleared out from the impact of Meteor. Her primary thoughts at the moment were concerning only her weary muscles and the uncooperative futon that served as her bed, or, to put it in more relative terms, Reno wasn't even remotely on her mind.

                "Hey, Tifah!" A voice bellowed from somewhere off in the distance, much too far away for her weary mind to cognize. Eight months and six days had passed since Cloud's clone, harboring all the little snippets of memory that formed the original's identity, had disrupted a meteor from plummeting to the planet and exterminating all life. Eight months. Occasionally, she wished her life had ended back then, when the cup of life and hope had failed her. 

                "Tifah!" He had recognized her token skimpy attire immediately, recalling from faulty memory banks the girl he used to mentally undress every time she emerged from whatever bowels her little faction found solace in. _No wonder she always kicked my ass_, he thought now, taking in every aspect of her stunning features and fierce presentiment. It had not been just her body that he liked, but her heart of gold, which shone out through her eyes. Many a time, though it was mostly the leather miniskirt persuading him, that spirit moved him enough to let her compatriots be.

                The emphasis of the last syllable in her name gave her a little intimation of who it was—her stomach welled up with fluid and churned in dread. 

"It can't be," She murmured, and she obliquely turned, her face carefully obfuscated by her long locks of hair. _Why do I need to make known some silly man devoted to getting my attention? It's not like I'll even…God_, her reddish eyes flared in disapproval as the person she suspected approached out of the haze.

                "Reno," Her mouth moved slightly, but her vocal cords had failed. The ex-Turk was loitering on the corner to the right of her, a cigar planted between two smug, playful lips. 

"How's it goin'?" She faintly revolved her eyes and continued onward, feigning obliviousness. Shaving the extraneous ash off the cigar hastily, he twisted it into his jaw and backed against the streetlamp with a suave tilt of the head. Her departing outline was branded in the centers of his blue-green eyes. 

                "That's right, go on and ignore me." She was the impetus of his meanderings in this world; she might as well quench his one desire. It was his opinion, and he tragically held to it. 

"Hey, Tifah? You hear me or not?" Where were Rude and Elena? She almost deigned to ask, but tried even harder to oppress any feelings of concern she may have had for them. After all, they were nothing more than the accomplices of this murdering revenant.

                "Tief?" She wasn't stopping, not even for an abusive jab. Within a few seconds of sprinting he had caught up to her, closely resembling the emphysemic Cid as he gasped his way up onto the pavement, which was enriched in shrapnel and the dust that could not be cleared—pieces of glass jammed deeply into the concrete stung the area, and pieces of broken pipe formed intractable arches in sections of the road which he managed to sidestep only by a hair. 

"You know it all, like some animal knows its tract." Doubled over with hands on his knees the emaciated coyote of a man stretched his limbs a little and smiled in a wide, ugly manner, and then drew himself upright. Her heart was beating in her breast. _You can run, just run. You'll make it. _

"Tifah?" Still ignoring him, she numbly fumbled over the edge of one of her skirt's pockets, hoping to retrieve the only fire spell she managed to hold on to after the ninja Kisaragi pick-pocketed them all dry of their faithful resources. 

She knew, at least, what had become of "the brat", as Barret, without affection, always termed the wayward ninja. 

"Tifa!" _I'm way too young to be putting up with this. _The twenty-one-year old girl being hailed resorted to her favorite evasion tactic. Turning around slowly, she burst into a warm smile and extroversion.

                "Why hello Reno! So, I…I didn't know it was you!" Her body protested this excitement, as it had since the day she had realized that it was a waste to get out of bed in the morning. She noticed how his fingers kept nervously tugging at the cigar in his guilt-ridden, unfeeling maw, almost blindly trying to remove the offensive attribute.

                "Yeah," He inhaled the rheumy stench of tobacco byproducts in his cigar, paused, and puffed again. "Yeah, I figure' that you'd do that to me. No hard feelings." He pried again, but the cigar was stuck fast. 

                "It's going to take the jaws-of-life to get this thing outta my mouth for good. Been tryin' to quit. Can't exactly remember when I started…"

                "So what do you want, Reno?" The way she looked up at him with those clear brown eyes only enhanced his desire. There was little chance that Tifa Lockheart would ever take notice of him again; there wasn't a boon or godsend in her looking directly at him, into his sordid green eyes. _Nevertheless,_ he thought determinably, _it couldn't hurt to ask._ _Could it hurt to amend to ask?_ Much less than probably asking, true, but there wasn't any satisfaction in at least knowing to be had from abstemiousness. He finally unwound his tongue and mustered the courage to ask. 

                "Ya, ya, wanna go out some time?" He rasped, then, finding the approach improper, he gulped and stipulated his cause with, "For rice and wine? I'll pay, you know. An' I won't smoke in the rest-or-runt…" 

                For the first time in eight months it seemed; someone was paying attention, and a cold mantle of sickness wore over her like a tide.  Smiling discreetly and without much apprehension on Reno's behalf, the former member of AVALANCHE sidled past a daunted, sputtering ex-Turk. 

                "So whassit gonna be Lockheart?" He added hastily, attempting to form a suitable smile with his tar-laced lips. His teeth nervously dug into the wrapper of the cigar, filling his mouth with tobacco. The soft rhythm of her shoes as her form tapered away panged in his temples.

                "A maybe." She responded weakly, almost to herself, sheathed thankfully (for a first) in the pollution of the Midgar streets.

Apathy Wanes for Others

On the Highwind, overlooking the now fabled city of Midgar, Cid plopped himself down beside the pilot's controls, arranged in a fashion in which he could examine all of the errors his recent pilot was making. Cloud, the etherized mercenary he had gotten to know and simply like (the numbskull) had departed a few months ago, accompanied only by his quaint little dreams of happiness with a dead girl.

"Shift it up a degree Marlene." Cid commanded, slurping cream soda from an aluminum can he had taken from a nearby crate. Dust and petrol brushed against his upper lip. The can had been sitting there for a while, he recalled, his mouth curling with distaste. Marlene's baby fat face rumpled as she unsteadily clung to the helm.

"That's dirty, uncle Cid. That can has been sitting there for days." Inattentive to her scowl, he continued depleting the remainder of the beverage. Flecks of moderately dehydrated cream soda clung to his grizzled chin.

"Didya move that lever up a notch?" He shouted, and crassly poured the flat contents out onto the deck in a final gesture of disapproval. 

"Mm?" Marlene shoved the controls to their maximum nonchalantly, nearly causing Cid an aneurysm. Within seconds, turbulence shook the large aircraft. Cid yelped and shoved Barrett's daughter aside long enough to man the gauges onto correction. After several sways the tantrum of the vessel had ended, and a new one had begun in the manifestation of the canker pilot.

"You nearly stalled the damn ship Marlene!" His hands flailed—Marlene watched miserably as the abandoned soda can rolled off of the side, her eyes brimming with tears.

"Gads! All of you are #&@%^$% DUMB ASSES! I can't believe the STUPIDITY it took!" Being a miraculously well-oiled machine of a pilot, Cid hadn't grown distraught with the incident as much as the recurrence of it. Cid, being a raucous, disaffected little Kodiak of a man, however, was still speaking to a five year old, a person with a relatively minimal amount of development, and his irascibility, while seemingly justified, could not amend the situation for the child.

"Now what would have happened if I wasn't aboard? I'll tell you what would happen! This piece of $#@% would have gone down in a #&@%^$% conflagration!" 

"Now, now." Shira chided, having felt the calamity through the steel ladders and ascended in her timely way to monitor the two. Her worn motherly face was directed at Marlene, who, after years of pacification, was agog in shock at Cid's gust of temerity. 

"Get that #&@%^$% finger out of your goddamn trap." He demanded snappishly. Marlene shook, and threw her hands behind her back innocently.

"She's just a child, Cid," Shera cooed, attempting to reason with him nonetheless. 

"Well, what if I wasn't here to realign everything?" He exploded, and then looked up, his expression stilted in shock. Smiling, Shira descended with Marlene in tow, understanding the motives behind his sudden wordlessness. At first, Cid attempted to trail them down into the recesses of his ship warm with engineering, and then paused, realizing that he was being followed with the cool, collective red orb of his tentative ally. 

"Red Eighteen." He mustered. The misnamed Red Thirteen stretched on his nimble, padded feet until a yawn came forth, his bulk causing the iron floorboards to creak. As he yawned, all Cid could think of were those glistening white teeth. Canines, they were called, Cid remembered. Canines, like a dog. Cid glanced up and gulped. Like a #&@%^$% predatory mammal—some kind of enormous, brute dog. 

"I call myself Nanaki now." The lion murmured pleasantly, shortening his pace as he neared. Nanaki, once given the alias of Red Thirteen, had always disturbed Cid in a manner that the pilot couldn't fully expatiate. Perhaps it was the way this creature's firm muscles rippled with prowess abound as he walked, his appearance a predatory one, his mentality fairly organized and adductive. Perhaps it was simply the primal observations that Cid had made in context to Nanaki as a perfect killing machine, if he hadn't such cheery wit and humanity. 

"What are you in for, buddy?" Cid hadn't used the predicate as a term of affection, Nanaki realized, knowing that Cid had to relieve the sudden anxiety that built up in that block of a skull of his. The lion, on the prowl in the lush undergrowth, stooped low, avoiding the line of vision of its prey. _Stop it_, Cid chastised himself. _Thinking like that's only going to make matters worse._

"I have come to gather the old party." Nanaki announced, that reddish chin moving tongue and teeth to produce language. _Predictable_, Cid thought. _Downright predictable. The old human was right, dammit. The cat was really special, right. Special in his ability to give the heebie jeebies to the mundane traveler._ Take for example, Cid Highwind. _Yeah, root de too toot and all that she-it…_the cat, as he would have it, epitomized eeriness. 

"Are you willing to join me, Cid?" Somehow the words were construed to mean, eat rice or die, or drink puss or die, or whatever his old gang buddies back in Rocket Town used to say when they were teenagers. Hey, I'm a big pussycat who'll make you an offa' you can't refuse…

"Eh, what the hell?" Cid replied casually. Just play along, his mother had always said. Play along with life and seventy percent of the time it won't screw you. Well, he had learned that life ordinarily ass-raped you when you looked one second ahead of it, take the past forty two years of his life leading up to the Highwind. At the end of the day, he could at least say that life had screwed him, big time, but afterward, he got to steal its underwear and show it to his classmates. Cid wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, a brilliant man, but he wasn't about to relive past experiences without due cause. Red gave him a disfavoring look.

"What the hell." The aging pilot consented, producing a lighter from his pocket and igniting a sleek white cigarette. He puffed it twice before his gaze returned to the peculiar science experiment before him. 

"Just give me the details first."

Solicitude for Solitude

The radio was blaring when he opened his eyes, climbed out of bed for the first time in a week, and grabbed his toothbrush, which was lying precariously on his slim black nightstand beside a clearly ruptured bottle of medication. It could be said that Vincent Valentine, from the vantage point of a casual observer, was a survivor of a great many things, but under a microscope, or simple cynicism, the Turk's dirtied, poor reflection of a soul was, like the eyes of a fly, only a great number of fragmented pieces stuck together with a common purpose. The purpose was no longer there, and yet, no matter what he affected, it just couldn't be bargained that death would take him. 

"I'm beginning to believe that he wanted to see me withstand the proving grounds," He muttered, leaning sluggishly over the sink he had managed to reach on wobbly, pajama-clad legs—pastel blue flannel draped over a thin, worn down body. He steadied himself, and then glanced at the stagnant pool of water still left as it was from a week before, cloudy. Fluoride crust was beginning to form at the waterline, a chalky blue against a yellowed basin surface. He drained it, lifelessly, pulling the little rubber plug and thinking, amen. He hadn't died. Things, he deemed, would never go as planned for him. No more mixed medications, he reasoned with what little thought he still possessed. They never achieved their goal. Next time, there would have to be knives, or razors. Next time…the thoughts cut off, and Vincent glanced at the clock, never lost with his cheery temporal guide. No. Never lost. Always where I always am…but he could not finish the sentence for the despair of it.

It's two o' clock AM, and I'm queasy. Unsteady. I could drown in my bathtub, but then I'd be stark naked, and without an arm. I'll just get washed. Besides, if I cut myself, the lacerations would be clumsy. They wouldn't know I planned it, and besides, I might not die. I might only get some damned infection that'll make my voice hoary for a few days. I might come close to that eternal serenity, but…what can I say? There won't be any tunnels or strobe lights or disembodied consciousness. Just an explosion of darkness and some white light, some blurry thoughts in oxygen deprivation, and then I'll be back at the bottom of the chutes and ladders when my aim is seeing cherubs doing the para para. That had happened to him once; he never spoke of it. Life was depraved, and adulthood the extension of a child's stupidity, only the more real, and reality was never better than the illusory world of the child. How did he expect to die on pills and gin anyway, when he'd been living, without food or drink, entirely neglected in a self-imposed stasis for thirty years? A tear rolled down his cheek, slipping off of the plastic-smooth skin of his eternally youthful face, and shivering, he brushed his sweat-sticky hand through his unwashed hair, contemplating whether this visage was the true monster, and whether he'd ever succeed in destroying it. Would I return to myself? Could I hope to have aged in death? Hojo was very meticulous and putative in his efforts on Vincent. _Baleful man, your wrath was godlike, but alas, you did not hold with my silly myths of creators, destroyers. …Why couldn't you have left me dead instead of altering me like this, Hojo? It could only have meant a mending of your sanity. Alas,_ and there his head bowed as he braced himself against the sink. _What do my ululations prove, since I am walking proof of vindictive insanity? A walking victim? No, I am a walking accident, plotted by a vengeful madman, the…product of a reckless love. _

_Hojo, my protégé; you dead, evil bastard… you have plundered so much of me._

Misery Begets Company

Yuffie Kisaragi wasn't the type of person to let an old friend down, especially not someone of Vincent Valentine's seniority. Besides, she had added to herself. In his current state, there might be a chance that he'd be easy, and determined ninja Yuffie was not about to forsake such an advantage. Somewhere, amidst less honorable introspection, she really was pendent in her worry for him. She hadn't seen him in over a month at the latest, and then he had been loitering around the square, debating whether or not to waste his time on nourishing himself with an orange. Sad. By now, he was probably unrecognizably emaciated. Doubly sad. She had never known before that erotic looking, disturbed vampiric monsters could experience eating disorders, but she guessed she did now. Her fist hit the door with a rapturous thud, her mind entirely focused on appearing genial and on the façade that this was a sporadic, motiveless visitation.

Please don't let him think that this was contrived, please. It possibly didn't aid the situation any that she had a dreamy, carnal look in her eyes and a black velvet suit that would give a prude an aneurysm. It didn't help that she was on the verge of knocking down the door and systematically ripping his clothes off with her teeth.

The door opened, revealing Vincent, disheveled and restless looking, his skinny fingers holding his pajama shirt closed, and his metal arm as sound an anchor to reality as ever. How dreadfully unplanned, the little thoughts needled through her head, but sensual nonetheless.

"Yuffie?" He was surprised. Good. She wanted to surprise him. The ninja stared at the floor innocently, and then worked her stare over every inch of his body. He looked at her in weak-kneed puzzlement. '_Yuffie_?' his look seemed to suggest. It struck him as odd that she should be _concupiscent_, _libidinous_—his devilish, child-like little Yuffie; decked out in a costume that he probably should have died to see Lucrecia in. He stirred his gaze a little, averting his eyes from the locks of dark hair slinking across her smooth and narrow neck as she watched in anticipation. _What kind of stupid call does one make dressed in that style of cloak? Did she raid a ballroom for screen actresses for its procurement?_

The petit ninja had found a way to make her presence very difficult for him indeed, and Vincent felt the pangs of an incipient but steadily increasing headache. He could vaguely see misdemeanor charges for petty theft being brought against her in the next few hours.

"It's…two in the morning." He stated, a last-ditch effort to make the situation awkward. Yuffie continued to watch him in utter silence, her eyes meeting his seductively. Wearily, Vincent sighed and, giving into the pressure, he swung the door from ajar to open. 

Vincent stared at Yuffie implicitly, not fully wanting to reveal understanding of what she was getting at, but certainly disliking it. He released his hold on the buttons, not in the least at ease with his visitor but certainly feeling less ashamed in light of the recent events. She would see the medication, and there was no use holding her back. If Yuffie wanted to know something, she usually acquired the details liberally.

"Don't tell me you're looking for Tupperware this late." He gimmicked. The ninja, in her raven outfit, smirked and floated into his messy apartment like a summer breeze (that is, if he had a window that wasn't rusted shut). Vincent, like most males, had at least some imperceptible weakness when around Yuffie. He often chalked it up to her four-point shuriken and skills as a student of the ninja arts versus his flimsily skinny, mostly organic person.

"Hmm. Nice place. Sort of homey." She observed silkily, rustling past his drawers and heading directly toward his rustic bed. The green plaid comforter was still pulled back. Vincent made a mental note to straighten up the next time he allowed someone into his room, and, as Cloud often put it, it would probably take parboiling to soften his disorganized habits. Welcoming thought of Cloud, their hyper-charged, somewhat taciturn, leader, he put Yuffie out of his mind for the time being... and graciously, too. The dainty ninja looked electrifying in black—he yearned for the muddled thoughts to be the gin he had imbibed.

Indeed, Cloud Strife had been a topic kept from memory for a while…. They later discovered him to be a precise copy of the original Cloud; a direct result of the mad practices of…drum roll please…Dr. Hojo. Rim shot. Of course, they had learned a little of his own unflattering past as well. Which is why Yuffie was the only one who said hello when he was spotted in the market. It could have been because she was conniving, it could have been some internal hope in the recesses of her mind that he would shag her (she wanted him badly enough—it was thick in the air even now, an awful tingle down his back that made him eager to retch), and it could, he postulated, be because he and Cloud had rescued her back in Wutai, and she had some sliver of gratitude, but it was mainly, he thought, because she was lonely, and because she did care for each of them somewhere underneath that haze of volatile teenage hormones and arrogance. She was nice. She had spirit. She was innocence, floundering around in a messed up teenager's shell. In respects to her antics, he didn't feel that anyone, especially himself, should destroy the fragile germination she was undergoing. He shook his head dejectedly. What am I, a moron? Her parent? Yuffie was off to the left, scrutinizing what little personal materials he owned.

"Kisaragi." He rumbled, leaning in the doorway, a sigh in his throat.

"Yes?" She purred, glancing furtively over her shoulder. A lock of hair had fallen into her face, across her eye. He remembered how nonchalantly his Lucrecia's hair fell as she clumsily dropped her files in haste, trying to placate her raging husband. Lucrecia. Researcher. Wife to Hojo. The woman who ripped his bosom apart, the woman who belonged with him, but even on her deathbed believed her love and commitment was Hojo's. Was. Now there was a word to curse. Belong had been another. Pretty Lucrecia with her beautiful reddish blonde hair and green eyes, her brilliant mind…he never understood how could she feel that she _belonged_ to _anyone_, how he could feel that she was his. Hojo had never given her a chance to flourish, and the anguish it caused him, had caused her unbeknownst to it, and had damned all of them, even as the bickering intensified, and the madman's wife found solace in his touch, had lent him precious moments of planting kisses on her eyelids as they danced, a lone pair, in the archives, and how his mouth had dried whenever she neared after they had shared their first kiss. She had always gone home with Hojo, but, after word got around, the tyrannical doctor wielded the only control he had at the time, he dismissed her early, and kept them separated. The thought that someone else might have her attention drove him madder still. Perhaps, one day, he would forgive himself for that kiss, so gentle that neither had known what they were doing until it was over, and perhaps, in some distant future, he could forgive Hojo, for most of it, except the ill-fated day that left him in his current state. Again his eyes encompassed Yuffie. Am I trying to protect you? Why? I cannot even scrape together the remnants of myself.

"Every foolish youth has a day of glory, and a day where their greatest mistake usually comes to pass." He began, noticing how her eyes lit up with elation, taking all of it in appreciatively. He strained his body against the doorframe and she came full circle, but he didn't bestow anything upon her, not even a fond look.

"Yes?" She inquired sleekly, closing in on him. "Anything I can do to help the story along there?" She craned her neck up, lust empowering her. Vincent smiled, and, timidly, brushed the fugitive strand back into her hairline.

"It's a proverb, not a story. My story, Kisaragi, is not one you should ever want to participate in." A flash, something like sadness, like grief, passed over his violent red gaze, transient, but intense nevertheless. Yuffie was startled. Vincent shut the door behind her, and motioned toward the window. For the first time Yuffie noticed the pungent smell of gin and cognac that emanated from him, a more effective deterrent stench than effluvium. 

"Take a seat. Stay if you like. Meanwhile, (he frowned at this, as if it was his only thought before the ordeal that was Yuffie) I think I'm due for a bath." Yuffie nodded, and then immediately began filing through his drawer suspiciously, noticing it completely empty of even a paltry amount of wear, finding most of that scattered about the floor. 

"Jimminy hell Vincent." Yuffie admonished. "When was the last time you did the wash?"

"You, of all people, I didn't expect to criticize." Vincent riposted, removing his pajama shirt, as he pressed onward into the cramped bathroom. Yuffie caught a glimpse of his back, concealed mostly by his long dark hair, as he slammed and bolted the door. The ninja blushed and turned her head to the side with juvenile glee, plucking her bottom lip with her fingers as she half grinned at the vision of the faraway, roguish Vincent still fixed in her immature mind. There was even somewhat of a gleam in her eye in that cramped area that the 'vampire' called living space.

Needless to say, she liked what she saw.

A Convincing Elucidation

Cid swiveled his neck, relieving some of the pain in his restricted back muscles as Red Thirteen yakked on about some fascinating discovery of an Ancient on the outskirts of what was once Midgar, and what was now a devastated, practically deserted town—outside of a few brave squatters. A decayed community; at last, Cid thought. No one else had ever seen it that way, but, even though he was a recluse, Cid had traveled enough in youth to understand the networks of community and settlement there. Neo-Midgar, not fifty miles away, dominated the landscape just outside the mountain ranges. This was, not oddly enough, where the remaining Turks had decided to establish research facilities on the fundamental basis of learning how the ancients really died out, since no one believed the cockamamie out-of-Africa vicissitude that Sephiroth preached. 

                Red Thirteen was, to say the least, amazed and respectfully gratified to see how patiently Cid had withstood his monologue. They were all gathered in the Highwind's conference room, Marlene occupying her time by making use of the pivoting capacities of a swivel chair. She released a little 'whee' sound and accidentally kicked Barrett's knee; he simply looked at her as if to say, 'please sit still honey'.

Barrett was, surely, an enigma. For a man with that much prowess he was sentimental and yet, at times, abrasive and undermining, yet unconditionally he loved that little pipsqueak of Dyne's as his own daughter. Virtually, by his nature alone, she was. This never seemed to register for Nanaki. His father, too, had been great, but also austere, a quality Barret had but to a lesser degree than what he remembered of his father. There never came to memory a time when he had laughed, or for that matter, any time when he showed emotion at all. But he loved Nanaki, deep inside, and to the so-called Red Thirteen, that was all that counted. Barrett, however, had taken time out of his severity to laugh and throw Marlene onto his shoulders. When I have offspring, Nanaki avowed, I should be like Barrett in this case.

"So, what's all the hubbub?" Cid asked, missing the subjunctive altogether. Nanaki sighed, and patiently reviewed the directive again.

"I think you are entitled to know about the findings, i.e., the fact that the ice where she was recovered predates the earliest known ancients—according to declassified Shinra documents. Professor Zinfandel will have to further the explanation when we get there." Barrett opened his mouth to speak, yet was cut off by the scruffy pilot in the denim windbreaker.

"Wait, wait-wait—his name's _Zinfandel_?"

"I don't believe that this was really the subject…"

"But Zinfandel…what's his first name?"

"Err…Mickey." Red Thirteen emitted, somehow seeing guilt in the action. Cid smiled, like a child who has received a new toy to be malevolent with.

"Wait a minute! I don't like this at all! They've got doctors workin' on it?" Barrett hollered, (to Red Thirteen this was unsound) standing upright.

"Well, they are specialists you must understand. And they're all quite trustworthy…we're at least sure of that. In fact, Doctor Trenton rather opposed Hojo's research, and Doctor Sing-Sing was nearly assassinated on countless occasions…"

"I still don't know about this," Barrett sighed. _Just as anticipated, dubiousness, that is,_ Red Thirteen sighed inwardly, rolling his eyes.

"I'll give you an hour to consider it." 

"Heh. Heh. Heh. Mickey Zinfandel." 

Reeve's Nexus

He never was the type to interject that, 'hey', which stood for, 'I belong here too'. He wasn't much the type to ask for help, or give it, but he had found a solution to his reclusive, neurotic behavior in that robot kitten/mog contraption, which he dubbed Cait Sith: fortuneteller and knower of all things wise. The controls sat in his lap. The radio signal was still quite strong, and they were so realistic looking…it was tempting, that's for sure. But he was going to have to hold on, wait, per se, in this faint yellow box until reality came in its form, looking at him in astonishment and distaste. No, he'd wait in this reception room for another forty-eight hours if he had to, and suffer the penetrating stare of the desk lady for some time longer, if he had to. They would come, and, although it wouldn't be a pleasant surprise, although the reunion would go along the lines of, '!!!! You?' or 'How in the--you set us up? !!!!' Ah, but that would be half the fun.

The desk lady came over in her beige skirt, tossing a magazine into his welcome lap.

"That's our only copy." She informed the ex-administrator coldly, somewhat miffed at him for sending her on a wild goose chase. He nodded, gratefully, and fished another lemon Popsicle out of the milky hobnail bowl that was seated on the oak light stand, positioned conveniently next to the row of chairs on his side of the waiting room. He unsheathed it as the secretary walked away, and sat forward suddenly, catching her wary brown eyes again. 

"Um…would you be a dear and dispose of this for me?" He asked, holding the crumpled wrapper out for her. The secretary sighed, exasperated, and snatched the sticky little polymer sheet from his outstretched hand. Immobility, she sneered in her head. I hate a man who sits on his ass. Technically, Reeve had always sat on his ass, even as Cait Sith; he hadn't done much more than control him from a safe haven. It was the outcome of the fight against Meteor that counted, it was what he had done when the weapons appeared, and it was... 

_Oh, hell_, he thought bemusedly, feeling the familiar pang of guilt and unsettling inferiority rustling underneath his skin. What did he really do for any of them? Reeve gummed his lollipop dolefully and opened his edition of the Circular. The name wasn't very original, but its upkeep was worth it. The articles were always spellbinding to him, always something new, fresh and original, at least, for the past three months that he had been subscribing to it. The Circular was a literary magazine for aspiring writers. He opened it midway, landing on page six of an ongoing series of essays, this one about poetic irony in environmental conditions since Meteor, something he hadn't really identified with. He turned to the next page, which was a graphic literary account of life in the Mt. Corel slums. He flipped the page, growing disinterested. Everything was provocative, supposedly political these days, it seemed, and everyone was a bleeding artist. He filed through several accounts of torture of experimentation victims, finding one that made him smile a little, one that didn't have a monosyllabic title like 'Still' but was very much along that line of work, written by some ambitious writer with a rapacious pen and an eye for non-existent detail. Sort of. It was about Reno, oddly enough. Presumably dead Reno, a name that Neo-Midgar remembered but barely connected with. _Ah_, Reeve thought, adjusting the lollipop, _now those were unconscionable days_…he flipped the page, reading about a bunch of rogues that played round robin and thought they had something, each writing about a Shinra figure. J. Ellisburg had made him into a saint. Groaning, he flipped the page, and read about even more experimentation victims. No surprise, more were being found everyday. Over five hundred impoverished and destitute women donated themselves to the Jenova project alone—every last one of them died. The head of the Turks at the time was responsible for covering it up. He turned the page. This next one was the story of a man, who, very much like Reeve himself, didn't have much of a role to play, but had done terrible things in the past, things that were spoken of here. He was disassociated from the man he later became, he was not recognized for who he was, or even ever known by the public; he had taken care to that. A man who, at Gold Saucer, literally perched on a railing, like a shadow, his red cloak sagging, cascading down a whipcord frame, a gun resting on his knee. Him. That thing was literary material; too, only like Reeve he was portrayed as reluctant. This writer, this N. K. Stevens or whatnot, hadn't the least idea of the extent of depravity. After all, no one even guessed the hell that Reeve went through himself. 

"Hmm." He mused aloud. "I wonder if anyone's been committed yet?" He turned the page, leaving the story alone for better days. He would probably laugh then, when it was all over again, but now? Now he would wait. He opened up to page forty-four, the only thing that could have been abreast with Reeve's mood. It was titled, 'Glum Slums and Assorted Mamby Pamby', and was a satire of Cloud and AVALANCHE'S involvement in the destruction of Meteor, complete with comic sketches of Reeve and Cait Sith looming licentiously over the text, done in dark ink, the way he liked. Reeve smiled felicitously from ear to ear, laugh lines visible, making him look like a cat shaven of all but a shock of black hair at its crown. It was always good to know that others shared his innermost feelings.

Fleeting Moments

"You know," Yuffie called from the other room, examining the tortuous folds in his bed sheets with her perfumed fingers. "I think you made a dent in your mattress."

"Maybe." Vincent replied, muted by the door between them and the rushing of the bathwater. On the opposite side of the wall, he was just beginning to work up lather in his hair; his fingers were virtually scrubbing his scalp bare and his arms were wringing with water that soaked into the towel around his midriff. The astringing beads of moisture brought a new invigoration with them. He inhaled sharply, allowing the droplets to trickle over his throat, to culminate in the dip between his clavicles. 

_So much for Kisaragi. Stupid wench. _He sat, head bowed into the bathtub, his hands dipping into the frigid bathwater with a small terry cloth rag. 

_I don't believe I'll particularly let young women enter my room in the future. _He brushed the wet fabric against his cheek, exfoliating it, gently, allowing the sensation to percolate his mind. 

_For one thing, I haven't the least notion what she'll see—I'll have to kill her if she obstructs my plans. _He brought the cold rag to his face yet again, smoothing the other cheek. He knelt forward…

A shriek, succeeded by a clamorous splash, alerted Yuffie to the happenings behind the bathroom door. She smiled, nullifying her body's protest to remaining in place.

"Vinny? You okay in there?" 

Vincent coughed, emerging from the water with a sneer. So much for that, he thought, trembling violently. His legs buckled and he fell back into the bathtub, head first. Summoning enough will power to remain in place, Yuffie listened to the sounds of his plunge. 

Vincent resurfaced; spewing a swell of water he had accrued from his fall. His coarse black hair was matted against his scalp in an oppressive fashion, preventing relief to his waterlogged ears. He splashed a little and wheezed, expelling another mouthful of liquid from his mouth in a spray of heavy red mist.

"Yes, Yuffie?" His voice was hoarse, from what she could discern. The dim roar of the radio in the background caught her off guard, but her attention returned to him quickly.

"Mm? Vincent?"

"Nothing…"

"What?" Vincent slumped deeper into the bathtub; his chin resting at the waterline as he sheepishly rendered himself as invisible as possible. Pain pricked every aspect of his body, so much that he winced.

"_Nothing_…"

"_Yes?_" She was insistent he had to admit. Vincent paused considered what he could say next carefully, unsure as to how the oversexed teenager might receive this. His teeth chattered, and his body shivered and tensed from the cold. Blood was everywhere, darkening the clear liquid around him. Blood oozed from his mouth and had spurt from his ears, draining down onto his neck. His eyes welled and clouded black around the edges, and, curious, Vincent placed his hand to his philtrum. He removed it, only to find that it was also bleeding. Living with himself for what he might deem far too long he could identify the symptoms with a host of problems that were linked to Hojo's tinkering with a perfectly average human body. He scrambled out of the bath, his body aching as he haplessly wrung out the corners of his towel. His pulse was already threading, and what was worse; Yuffie was still present. _Tell her to run, idiot._ Vincent hesitated. As introspective as he was, it was still difficult for him to admit consciously that he was being immensely rude to an actual lady. For a moment, he stared numbly at the door, knowing that she was on the other side. _Maybe, maybe she can interrupt this, before it starts, before I…_his eyes snapped wide and he crashed to the floor with a whimper. 

Full minutes had elapsed since the utter silence began, Yuffie noted, resolving to keep her calm. It was certainly more useful than hysterics. 

"Been swallowed up, Vinny?" Vincent, from where he lay, tried to revolve his eyes and threw up a dark fluid onto the floor, distinct with the flavor of gin. Bile. He moved his lips, weakly attempting to remove the dirtied strands of hair from his mouth. He coughed and, expelling further fluid, he spat, snatching a hair and drawing it back from his face morosely. _Either she helps me, or this entire block gets to meet a more disquieted side of me…_ He grabbed for a bundle of clothes in the corner, and drew a shirt. He similarly fetched a pair of pants, fighting back the pain in his spine—everywhere. He blinked his eyes with difficulty, and inhaled with a wheeze of pain as his side pricked in a thousand places from the effort. 

"…Wait a moment," Yuffie, unbeknownst to the agonies awaiting her, flipped her hair back casually and took another longing glance at the wall. 

"Vin?"

"…Just…come in here." _He said it so reluctantly, and yet, with such compelling willfulness…_ The doors that steadfastly held between them were showing a little weakness around the jams, she surmised, cracking a munificent smile. 

A few seconds later, the door creaked open, and Yuffie poked her head in, her treacle hair falling slyly into her line of vision again. From what she could discern in the overwhelming light, Vincent was seated with his back against the bathtub, breathing shallowly. 

"…Vincent?" His frame remained still, his pale fingers clutching the edge of the bathtub, spattered with blood. Yuffie stood there, mesmerized. From the moment she saw him to the moment she cried out his name, her heart had skipped about five beats.

The red-eyed scarecrow of a man stirred, if only a little. It was comfort to her nonetheless. Sighing heavily to control her panic, Yuffie plucked the strands of wayward hair and tugged them back behind her ear. Looking back at the prone and twisted figure stranded in a jumbled posture on his bathroom floor, she reinforced her constitution and braved a step forward.

"Get out while you can." Yuffie blinked. His voice, usually devoid of warmth, was devoid of life as well. Taking extreme caution with her step, Yuffie crept through the small opening she had made and across the tiles to him, the bathroom having all of the pressure of hot steam while being deathly cold. Pausing, she gazed down at the back of Vincent's head, into the silvery black of his hair, and leaned forward. A pungent metallic odor hit her as she approached, but she paid no mind to it, knew what it was already.

"Leave," He whispered, his head lowering. Yuffie disobeyed, leaning over and entangling her arms in his damp hair. She could palpitate his body shivering and moved closer, her chin meeting the base of his neck, trying to coax him out of his dissidence. She drew him upward, dragging his body into a kneeling position, and a drop of blood fell onto her cheek. 

"Oh…" Vincent felt Yuffie's grip relax and bowed his head, pulling himself forward, a pale smile crossing his face. 

"I'll live, Yuffie. It's merely a nosebleed. …You should go home." 

"Sure. And I'll believe you told me to run because of a _nosebleed_." She scoffed, smearing the blood into her cheek with annoyance. There was a long silence in which Yuffie numbly watched the water fill with redness where Vincent's fingers helplessly grazed it, incarnadine with blood. His blood? He straightened his posture mordantly and blinked away a reddish tear at the corner of his eye. __

_Stupid girl. _She wound around the bathtub and Vincent lowered his head to his chest evasively. 

"Come on," She coaxed, forcing his chin up with her hand. Vincent clutched the rim tightly and did his best to shake his head. Gingerly Yuffie's fingers slithered up his cheeks, probing, and he pulled away defensively. His nose was bleeding viciously, mingling with the water on his face; diluting the blood to a translucent red that had smeared his upper lip. He squirmed at her touch; his pupils were migrating upward into his skull.

"Yuffie." He used her name imploringly, all that he could resort to in his helpless state. "Please." A thin trickle of blood dropped from his mouth onto the floor, and Yuffie closed her eyes, suppressing a gasp.

"What kind of fool do you take me for, _Valentine_? You…You don't look fine to me Vin…" Vincent's eyes retreated with bemusement as another drop of blood trickled down his face, hitting the water with a thin plop.

"Do you have anything in your cabinet? Rags? Bandages? Powder?" Yuffie inquired, swallowing nervously. 

"A…yes." His coloring was something bordering on chalk white, and the blood was permeating his skin. His condition symptomatically resembled hemorrhagic fever. 

_Stupid, just stupid. _He laid his head on the chill surface, cooling the fire that raged on his brow. _She won't leave, won't take cover for her own safety…blind, utterly blind._ Utterly benumbed was more fitting. 

"Yuffie." Yuffie shrank back from where she was cowering behind the medicine cabinet doors, her complexion a shade atypical for a noble girl of Wutai that did not partake in the traditional role of women as an incarnated spirit fantasy. Her skin was white; talcum powder white, and her eyes were bloodshot. 

"What is it?" She asked in her best voice. The barbarism of the bleeding… Yes, even that—that had been this way. Dark hair in a damp environment, blood flowing, eyes burning. As an afterthought, her father told her that her mother had died in childbirth, hoping that she wouldn't remember it as it was. She had though, and reviled him for it, and for his damn complacency. It was Fate, he told her. Fate? You can't believe in that word, when you hide from it behind a waterfall while it takes your mother, and destroys your infant world. 

"I…!" Vincent was thrown forward in a spasm, the pain sheering through what was left of his mind. He was forced to gasp for air, unable to voice his concern for her welfare, unable to alert her to the danger. 

Two arms tentatively reached out and drew him back, and in a shaky, emotional little squeak Yuffie spoke.

"Come on, let's get you outta here." He tried to protest, only to receive a sudden pain across his cheek; where her hand had fallen.

"Vincent," She chided. Blearily, he sought her eyes with his vision; his bleary, bloody eyes just moistened balls of limestone in his skull accented with two messy reddish-blackish dots. Yuffie nodded solemnly.

"You can't stay on the floor all night, hemorrhaging to death, now can you?" No, Vincent supposed, clutching the bridge of his nose weakly. He felt like he was suffocating, and thoughts of the coffin rose out of the annals of his mind.

_No_. His eyes dilated, his respiration was popping out of his skin. He fell forward onto the tile floor. 

_Stay calm_. Closing his eyes, he tried to push away from the girl who shielded him so protectively now, and the pain steadily increased. 

"It's just a nosebleed," he averred in a debilitated whisper. "I'll…I'll be fine." 

_Get out._ And he fell unconscious.

Something 

Reno was still spitting the remnants of his cigar out of his mouth when a woman rounded the corner. 

"Top of the mornin' to ya, miss," He called out as if she should turn her head with suspicion. She did not, however, take the time to give him an offending stare. It was a cold morning, and the fog had settled in thick. It was her obligation to stare—it was human courtesy. The way she was moving had revealed an all too insidious force behind her, a boding so intense that despite the sting of tobacco in his mouth swallowing was a necessity. 

She wasn't a pretty woman, by Reno's standards, not pretty in the streetwise and ineluctable fashion as the buxom Tifa, but pretty in a fully unconscious sense, a fully intellectual high-forehead sense that Reno had never bothered with, a woman without primitive wiles but maybe a ginger, delicate approach to courting that wouldn't have done Reno any good if he'd had tried. She was middle aged, also, from what he could tell of the wrinkles around her eyes—which were few but nevertheless present. Her arms were criss-crossed over a leather rectangle, and her body had been dressed in what was absolutely necessary for an outing and a thick wool shawl, an off shade of lavender centralized in color by the lack of sunlight, and her glasses teeter-tottered on her face as the blonde hair she possessed coiled around the lenses and the shawl as she moved. _God,_ Reno thought, and cringed. There was something foreboding about a woman like that.

"Bitch," He muttered when she was safe enough in the distance. The last thing he needed right now was a mysterious, freakishly thin woman perambulating all over the premises of a demolished city with what looked like a leather-bound book clutched in her hands.

_What the hell,_ Reno thought, warming his hands in his pockets and taking a rather incautious step forward. _This should prove to be insane. _

Rounding another corner and pausing before a fire escape, Doctor Sydney Helsing glanced up the clime with defeat. Where most would see wrought iron, she envisioned a mountain.

"I'll never reach the summit in time," She breathed, her blonde hair green in the city's light. She wasn't a bad candidate for this if she would just climb. Her violet eyes watered and she moved a trembling hand toward the railing. Somewhere, in the cracks that served as alleyways, a dog howled. She shook. _They're closing in on me!_ Her instincts plead with her to climb, and she shouldered the book in her shawl incautiously. The dog barked again. _Climb!!!_ In fear-driven panic, she stumbled up the black metal beneath her bare feet, shuddering and mumbling as she made her way up the plane. Mumbling… and losing sight. The world was deepening in tone as she laid her shriveling hands on each rail, and with every step forward, she yearned toward the castellation of rock just out of reach. Reaching the top of one flight, she carried onward, turning up another set. She could hear the respiration of the dogs now, could hear them scrambling up the stones to meet her and take her down in a fit of blood. She let out a startled wail and kept moving, through wisteria and heather…

…Up a frosty flight of Midgar steps…

…Through junipers and barberry…

Her limbs tore to scratches from the metal and her hazardous movement. She was chanting something underneath her breath, and moving in a jaunty annex of acceleration. Her limbs flailed as if she were tearing up clumps of brush in her path. 

Reno's eyes remained fixed on the woman as she raced toward something, some imagined height. The cigar wobbled on his lips, and then fell without warning to the ground. The embers diffused into a cool haze upon contact with the damp and frosty asphalt of the street. Reno could care less about the cigar now…his eyes looked about ready to eject from his skull.

"What, in the name of…shit?"

_Climb!_

…She reached the summit, the periwinkle sky coarse and grainy. She turned around. The dogs had followed. 

The early morning was filled with the sound of a shriek, and terrible silence. The first of the city's surviving citizens spewed from the apartment next to the fire escape, four of them, donning white evening gowns and lace. These were women who had seen everything at least once, and wore it on their crinkled, ancient faces.

They saw the mangled woman below them, about twenty-seven feet below them. One of the three elderly women who emerged, in tow of her husband, gasped.

"Oh dear." She turned to another with the same bob of gray hair.

"Emma, go inside and call Inspector McCracken, now."

"I don't see why," The stubborn woman began. Then she peered over the edge.

"Oh," She started, her mouth gaping. She put an arthritic, quaking hand to her lips to conceal some of her fright. "Oh!"

"My thoughts exactly," Snapped the eldest, placing her hands on her squat hips and squinting into the mist.

"Damn neighbors always creatin' a drama. Emma, call the police."

The Legendary Drunken Bastard Returns

Tifa trotted back down the street, her arms pumping feverishly. At first, she had thought it was an ambulance for one of the city's elders, who had lived there through its demolition and decades prior to that and had never saw it fit to leave the smoldering wreckage. She worked her muscles to the best of their ability in her exhaustion, having just settled down in her living room with a potted plant only moments before. A few more athletic strides brought her in range in the dense mist to ascertain that the strobing light belonged to a police car. She shrugged in hopeless interest. Okay, so maybe the old bags down the street were invincible, but someone had stirred up something. Undoubtedly Reno. She ambled forward, her chest sagging with exertion, and ran her hand across the hood of the old Shinra vehicle, converted for the time being into the Midgar city police transport. They were a loose institution, in many respects, often called in if grand larceny or murder was involved. She edged her way past the brick corner of the building, transfixed on the images, blinking with red every second or so, in the dim recesses. 

There was an old woman, dumpy and wrinkled, all of her properties appertaining to those of Tifa's octogenerian neighbor, Mrs. Smith. Her son in law, an old man in shorts and a tank top with a sagging face and stomach, was behind her with his wife's timid arm looped in his. Her other daughter Emma looked on expectantly behind them both. 

Reno was squinting in the light, his face streaked with condensation, and a ubiquitous cigar in his mouth. She shook her head as the officer in charge—McCracken from what she could tell of his skinny neck under the dark gray overcoat—proceeded in taking notes on a clipboard. 

"So, you didn't see the actual crime, then?" He asked Mrs. Smith's son-in-law. Reno looked at McCracken like a man that sheer accident had befallen. 

"No sir." The Turk interrupted, spraying some ash on the concrete. His blue eyes wandered over the alley, and he smiled knowingly at her. He gestured at something—perhaps a body—in the darker contrasts that only came with a thick fog. 

"That woman was carrying a book," He declared, looking at the body Tifa could now observe, grimacing. It was a woman, wreathed in black plastic that the city police always had on hand. Her curly blonde hair streamed out from underneath the covering.

"Are you certain?" McCracken wondered, his pencil skimming the damp page pensively. 

"Michealis' daughter couldn't be surer," Reno assured him, gnawing his cigar furtively. 

"Oh, all right then," Said an ambiguous McCracken, who knew nothing of whomever Reno chose to refer to. He glanced up, a nervous glance, the kind you often found in small monotremes living on the seventh continent. Reno smiled sickly, and McCracken gave him the spiky echidna stare again.

"Could you um…describe the book in um…greater detail?" McCracken asked, drumming his chewed up, lavender colored pencil on his leaf of paper.

"Sure." Reno replied. He took a final glimpse at the alley before advancing toward Tifa.

"Sir!"

"Leather-bound, like the kind I used tah see all the time in tha Turk buildin'." He shouted back over his shoulder, a shiver running down his back that caused his suit to tremble about his frame.

"Like some damn doctah's notebook." He added, shuddering.  As he came out of the alley, he puffed the cigar, ramming straight into Tifa, who had her arms folded against her curvalicious frame, and a furious pout on her lips that wouldn't appear to diminish anytime soon. 

"Tifah-san." He credited calmly, sidestepping her and leaving the vicinity at a speed that she had come to recognize as suspicious, conniving even. He placed his hands in his pockets and shuffled anxiously against the wall, facing her. He wasn't cute, she realized, having smoked until he was baggy-eyed and having drunk himself to a state where he usually couldn't distinguish his foot from his ass, but he was rustic enough somehow to keep her attention, or perhaps merely her distrust.

"What did you do this time?" She demanded. He gawked apishly at her, admiring her pearl earrings.

"Reno?"

"Eh?" He mumbled, coming out of his trance, half-heartedly teasing her anticipation. Thoughts of her beauty had to recede, though; had to be postponed until evening. Had to be.

"Gorgeous?" He blurted. Taken aback by his own voice, he slithered into the frame of the wall with what seemed to be abnormal ease. Tifa sighed and glared at him.

"What's going on, you underdeveloped ape, you debouched fish, you rank cauldron of muck?"

"Ask the cop." He iterated evasively, combing his dingy red hair back. This only intensified her stare.

"Persistent?" Quipping tersely, he folded his fingers over the rim of his pockets and added a harmless shrug to the combination of words and sights. _Not worth assaying her humor ole fella,_ he thought grimly, eyeing the virulent set of her jaw with jaundice.

"What's going on, then, since you can't give me a straight answer," Her scathing, peremptory tone made his ears flush. He buried his chin in his high collar.

"Oh, you know…some girl knocks herself off in the alley way…an' of course, there has ta be a suspect." 

"Is that so?" Her eyes narrowed, and he broke into a devilish grin as she placed her hands on her hips. 

"'Spose so. That's tha only way I've ever seen it done, you know. Frankly," He continued, shaving the ash off of his cigar again. He then looked her square in the eye, not what she'd consider an inviting glance, but rather the cruel and direct incisiveness of someone who grew up on the streets, someone who knew the slums well enough to root around for people in those districts. 

"I think she was delusional. She had this weird look in her eyes an' ev'rything." He couldn't resist averting his gaze and shuddering at the prospect.

"Reno," Her voice came at him in a dire whisper, something jarringly unexpected. He glanced down at her, his baggy eyes—baggy from cigars and coffee and too many long nights on the prowl in a downtrodden sector or two—peering out from that skinny body, so twisted up in its casual suit and bound to be all apparel with a dummy's head. Reno was just another creature in its pathetic attempt to right itself after years of concentrated impressments on its inherent conditioning underneath the Gestapo-like Shinra. So he looked at her, dog tired was his glance, and it distilled the impression that there were things—experiments—that went unsaid because no one wanted to talk about them. She stared back at him now with that imperative, take-charge glint that she usually had in her eyes when the world was about to go to hell. He had grown sick with dread of this, and wanted to grab the proactive bitch and sneer her into complicity, not preparation. She hadn't the slightest what she was up against, and he wasn't about to torture her to keep her quiet. Certainly, he would not tell her.

"What's going on here?" Reno sighed, and fumbled around in his pocket, fishing out a small leather-bound booklet with gold leafing. She gawked at him and he covered her mouth forcibly, before she had the chance to divulge his little secret. Her body went cold at his touch. _Surely, he'll kill me now. I never wanted it to end this way…_

"Shhh. You want McCracken finding out about this?" Hissing, he sprayed her with his gruesome saliva and gestured toward the alley again. 

Wide-eyed, she shook her head, and he directly released her.

"What? Did you?!" He clamped his hand over her mouth again and brought his face close, staring intently into her eyes. What passed before her eyes was a mere blur—her blood pumped with fear and repulsion.

"No." She looked up in surprise. _No. Just like that. No cover-up explanations. _Either Reno had improved in beguiling her or he was actually telling the truth. Her gaze softened over those sharp, shifty, cynical blue-green eyes.

"I… lifted it offa her." He muttered, turning his head guiltily. "Had to pay that ole biddy fifty gil to keep silent." He returned the book to its niche within his suit and looked at her with murderous severity. She sighed against his hand. Once a Turk; always a Turk. The instincts were indelible. Still…her warm breath tickled his hand, her warm blood held promise. He freed her mouth up and she let out a piercing scream. 

"Oh, brilliant." He mumbled, revolving his eyes and clamping them shut. With nothing else to resort to, he stuck a grimy finger in his ear against the noise. 

"Just bang pots why don't you?"

"What's the commotion?" A sonorous, official sounding monotone shouted over her. Reno turned, a wizened grin on his face, the cigar pressed between two rows of off white teeth.

"The uh, lady here she ah, well, she—she thought she saw a shadow see. 'Ver superstitious; this gal. Thought it was a shade from hell." He looked at Tifa imploringly, and she nodded faintly, consenting to his cover up. Perhaps he hadn't killed the woman, but for her, there were no such guarantees. McCracken sighed, looking just about to collapse. What, missin' yer Mog? Reno was tempted to jab at the pathetic excuse for an investigator, but the near-dead professional side of Reno knew it was moronic. He instead shot him a sidelong glare that, in Reno's modestly vain opinion, was more satisfying because of his pose, and well worth it for McCracken's stupid expression, a combination of a dumbfounded smile and a facial frieze of death. Tifa nearly smirked, sating Reno even further.

"Well, I'm finished conducting the investigation here anyway." McCracken admitted sheepishly, deactivating his flashlight. "You two should probably return to your homes. The police'll be combing the area soon, and I wouldn't want anyone who falls in the clear to be shot at. Especially not Tifa." He shot his best charming look at the young woman and then turned, looked as if he had forgotten something, and wheeled around in a panic.

"And don't disturb the crime scene!" He added quickly, adding to this an insincere, awkward and befuddled smile.

"Thanks." Tifa muttered weakly as McCracken strolled back to his car, whistling. As the door slammed she shot Reno a look of sheer venom and stepped on his foot.

"Yaa!" He yelped, leaning against the wall. His face had contorted oddly in his pain, and the cigar had nearly fallen out of his mouth. McCracken drove off into the morning mists.

"Creezy Cheese! What the smeg was that for!?" He shouted, limping forward and a little off balance. She caught him in the stomach and glared at him. Tiny flecks of ashes and a roll of tobacco made their way down onto the asphalt road. He sucked in a breath, squinting, and his sunglasses fell down, bouncing on his nose like a toddler on a grandfather's knee.

"I accept your dinner invitation." She stated, and in a fury turned away, sidling back up the street. Her long dark hair swished back and forth as she moved, covering her perfect buttocks. Reno, a sucker for physical injury, slid down the wall with a disbelieving gasp. He then groaned out her name:

"Bitch!"

Facta Non Verba

It was actions, not words that always defined Cid from the regular yokel's bum. He was never good with words anyway. Oh, of course he could weave them into a series of colorful expletives any time he felt like it, but even that took lingual effort he wasn't used to or in the least bit comfortable with. He was now drumming his fingers at a rapacious speed that vibrated throughout the room. He twitched. There were some innovations that even an apostle of facta non verba couldn't conform to. Cid needed a cigarette. Factus Dicent Sonore Verbum. Red XIII wasn't very accustomed to inhaling one hundred and forty noxious chemicals in one sitting. Puer matris.

"It's a verbatim custom to avoid smoking in the canyons." Red had lectured. Words came out. Cid squinted. Something about a vertebrate, he thought, was mentioned. Oh, well. He wanted a bloody cigarette, and he'd be bunkered if the lion king was gonna tell him what he could and could not do. He fidgeted with the lollipop in his teeth, rummaging through his pockets. 

"Don't see why I cin't, just 'cause snagglepuss gets an asthma attack." He grumbled, padding himself down for his twenty pack box. There were two left from five hours ago that he wanted to burn like jet fuel. (They didn't call him Highwind for nothing.) Aha! So that's where they went. He removed the cardboard box with the effortlessness of any chain smoker. 

Recalling the conference room again, and now having a cigarette to appease him, Cid reflected on his youth. Midgar was the apple of his eye. It was the city, however restricted it was, that could have made him famous by launching him into space. It was urban mire that offered limitless opportunities to those that went on their life's pilgrimage to it. Something about the air there, Cid suspected, contained magic, (or at least the literal form of magic, Mako). Now, half of it had become an iridescent crater, and the other a dumping ground for the migrant poor and a few fast holding members of the elderly, too steeped in penury or simple sentimentality to leave, and too financially strained to survive for long in such a pocket of desolation. Tifa had gone back there, he remembered, fondling a cigarette nonchalantly, mechanically placing it to his lips and automatically lighting it. He stared out the window ruefully, and thought of the others, taking pity on their emotional weaknesses that must have brought them all to untimely deaths. Except Cloud. No one quite knew where he was, or if they did, they were dead and couldn't talk about it. He sighed, puffing the cigarette thoughtfully. Reeve never would have scraped himself into anything substantive, unless someone was looking for a cracked puppeteer. As it was, his job description and record wouldn't even make him suitable for serving flan in a fake ritzy restaurant. Yuffie might have been lucrative, until the Neo-Midgar task force took her out for theft. Tifa probably got it early off of alcohol or whatever other ills that bought young, beautiful women tickets to the Stygian. Strong lady or no, heartache rendered that sort of thing quite effectively. What else was left? She had fought so hard for nothing—the slums were obliterated when Meteor hit. Nothing could restore the city to any hierarchical order—it was over, and her expectations never came to fruition. She left broken hearted. Aeris was dead; so no luck there for her, either. Vincent was Hojo's caged circus freak—much like Red, but more screwed up than red lion boy of wonder would ever be, could ever be. Yeah, Hojo liked a red decorum…and deep within Cid, he felt a slight mourning for those days. The loss of company had been a blister on his heart—sure, he still had Barrett around and Shera, but….no matter how gruff he was, he clearly hadn't minded them…as much as anyone else, at least. He ground the cigarette into his molars, emitting a faint wheeze.

Reveries. They were ridiculous reveries, and he probably wasn't right to go on his own, but…he had always been a loner—no mistake. Cid and Cloud saw eye to eye on some matters of the heart. A stream of cold air glided across the boat, causing the sides of Cid's face to twitch. No matter how mismatched a band of freaks they really were; ditzy, happy go lucky Aeris, the pretentious numbskull Cloud, hardheaded, perfect bodied Tifa, suicidal revenge-maniac don't-give-him-a-gun-or-else Vincent, that damn obnoxiously difficult Yuffie, cantankerous Barret (who had as of late transformed into a big papa pussy cat), bumbling, duplicitous Cait, Creepy Red--hell, even Cid himself—they formed a cohesion that couldn't be blocked, couldn't be stopped—not even by the so categorized "ultimate being". And somehow, it mattered, even if they were living ignominious lives now, or had long since retired to their cenotaphs. It was probably too early to suspect such things…people had a way of persevering. 

"They're freaks." He muttered briskly to himself. _Freaks are still people,_ Cid thought, and, realizing the exclusiveness of the phrase, added:

_Even if they're not…_

Cramped Living Quarters Indeed

Yuffie dozed moodily in Vincent's windowsill, having given him her word that she wouldn't try or do anything except leave. The feeling was nevertheless mutual that she would not, but, given the chance, Yuffie might have tried curling up with him. His expression had relayed deep physical discomfort, deeper than she had ever experienced in her life, but she knew what that kind of punishment to the body could act upon the mind. He had given her all of the pillows he could scrounge up, even the ones on his bed, only after she had upheld her oath to him in an ornery fashion by protesting even nearing it. Before that, he had offered it to her with the threat of going for a walk in his state. As pragmatically as possible, she told him how impossible she felt this was. Sitting in the windowsill had come down to her choice. Unable to leave him as he was, she felt that she should stay and dote on him a little more, since he obviously lacked the needed attention. Vincent, as expected, didn't argue with her verbally, but shot her typical, "I dislike your involvement in my affairs, go away." expressions. 

He was resting now, resplendent in chilly, slightly damp clothes and a dusty blanket, with a temperature like a hot water bottle and a mesh of cloth-dried black hair flush against his face, Miffed, she had crawled into her bed by the window, remonstrating with her gods so she didn't get tetanus from the riotous bars or a finger amputated by the defunct fan within. She slept as the saintly do in a crypt, excluding the eyes flitting back and forth underneath her eyelids. 

Vincent let out a strangled yell and clawed at the air, his fingernails gleaming with unseemly light. Yuffie stifled a breath in mid-snore and blinked, her eyes forcing open in alarm. Vincent's hand fell back into disuse, and everything grew quiet, mitigating the disturbance. Yuffie continued watching, and closed her eyes once more, leaving one eye open just a fraction of an inch. For a substantial amount of time, everything was quiet, convincing her that the danger had passed. With a drawled out, contented yawn, the girl nestled back into her bedding and reposed. 

Although in a deep sleep, Vincent's face reflected pain as he writhed on his bed, curling and uncurling his fingers, gnashing his teeth. There was pain, much as it always been, sharp in its incipience. Beads of sweat had formed over creased eyelids, which were violently trembling. Fangs had grown. Sinews were rippling underneath the skin, worming their way through the rough predisposition of the flesh. His chest heaved and sagged in distress, and enamel scraped enamel in his mouth, abrasively grinding as blood began to flow and the teeth fell out. Fingers began bleeding and the nails wilted, as they grew longer, becoming harsh and sharp, with wicked curves on the ends. Gasping, he clutched at his head, burying the claws into flesh, puncturing it, letting the blood run loose from his temples. _Catharsis. No._ His mind was struggling with achenon. 

Gasps, moans, and the sound of writhing stirred the silence. Tissue tore and hands collapsed against the flesh, running down, blood stained, to the base of the neck. 

A strangled gulp emanated from the darkness, and Yuffie awoke sharply to the appalling vision of broken red eyes staring into the deep that was the night embowering them, a man with a youthful face transfigured in pain, who was clutching his head tyrannically in order to quell the aching within. A torn sinew was excreting liquid, which rushed as if the arteries had burst and rinsed the gnarled hands with the thick carmine essence of blood. The fingers, wrists hands clothes and mattress—everything was smeared in blood. The chill of the scene left Yuffie fixed in place, dumbstruck. Red, black in the night, began to dribble down his wrists, making swift arcs down his face, pooling at the corners of his mouth, and plummeting onto the white bedspread. The blood glistened barely, a dull shade where there was normally a reflection of the form smeared in it. The eyes, haunted and wide, began to emit a yellow luster, faint, which amplified with each passing second. He began to rise, as if beckoned by something, his eyes affixed on the ceiling, faraway, negligent, and unassuming. In the thrall of something, almost-- something sinister, licentious, beckoning, beguiling. Something was taking hold in him. Muscles tore, filling the air with the snapping of bones, and the oleaginous stench of the inhuman blood. His hair slipped down into the mess, blood and skin met, and the skin broke upon contact. The head inclined and twisted as the pearl white of his newfound teeth began emerging from swelling nodules of blood and fluid. The mouth widened; a rush of blood seeped out. Nails and teeth grew phosphorous, and, underneath of the bloodied fabric, muscles began rippling. The yellow eyes gleamed. Whatever remained of Vincent screamed inaudibly as the dormant demon he harbored ravaged through him, ransacking his features for its inimical aspects, waylaying the familiar for the near alien. Stilled in fear, this process was not unlike what she had witnessed before in battle. Yuffie glanced at the door, knowing that what little time she had left she could not expend on an escape attempt. So she flung herself at him, arms outstretched, and pulled him down with her. They hit the mattress harshly, and Yuffie wrestled the immobile form to gain sight of his face. The demon dissipated, leaving behind a human a being in terrible distress. From every gash he had made for his demon's entertainment, there came a disproportionate amount of hemorrhaging.

"Vincent?" He didn't respond, his body limp and inanimate, and his expression neither quiescent nor troubled. The eyes had slid shut—he was no longer quaking or moving, no longer breathing. Her chest heaved, and she ran a hand through her hair anxiously.

"Vincent?" Instinctively she patted his face, causing the blood in his mouth to drain, viscid from froth and saliva, into his hair. Her fingers ran over the dampened follicles—over the surface of the bed, replaying his transformation in her mind. The yellow light glistened in his eyes and he bolted upright, staring indistinctly at the wall. Yuffie reached over and clutched his shoulders, pulling at them as if it should pull him back into reality. The color faded fast in his eyes and they closed, and, as if on cue, his entire frame fell inanimate—his arms hung loosely over her arms, and his neck arched back from the weight of his skull. His skin was frosty—her fingers were a ghastly white just from touching him. She realized then that the limpness of his arms was from arrest, and she loosened her hold on him.

"Breathe. Please breathe. Come on. _Breathe_." She begged viciously, glaring at him. Vincent was unresponsive to her touch. His lips remained pursed in their uselessness. She inhaled raggedly and shook him, listening to the tick of an errant clock lost among his wilderness of clothing. A couple loose strands of hair fell into his eyes. Purposeful movement? She hazarded to mutter his name, pat his hand—and every so often during her ministrations she felt the blood lurch through her own veins as she stared at his empty corpse.

"Damn it Vincent!" Yuffie yelled, feeling abysmal. Her idiocy wasn't going to bring him out of it. _He's dead, Yuffie. You did all you could do. He's dead and he's going to disintegrate somewhere in the soil, get sopped up by the bacteria. He's going to 'become one with the planet'. What's so bad about that? It's going to happen to you, right? Don't you sit and contemplate it every day? No_, her voice, among these thoughts, stood to resonate, trembling and opposed to this dreadful possibility. _I won't have it._

_Never trust Shinra_, she had thought, had believed. It had served as her creed for nine vengeful years. Now one of them had died in her arms…

"Vincent!" The clock sped up, and Yuffie snarled, witlessly pale with rage, her blood pumping recklessly through her veins. She scanned the dimly lit room for a telephone, wondering if it would do any good, when her eyesight came to rest on his nightstand. On the scattered pills…

_You fuck, you absolute fuck…_ She punched the mattress just above his shoulder, her eyes flaring with betrayal. Two hands reached out in the dismal haze of night and shook him virulently.

"You're not going to die on me, you pathetic eyesore of a man." She sneered, shaking him again. "Now, wake up!" Her body was aquiver with excitement, and her bloodshot eyes locked onto him in utter spite.

"Breathe! Damn you!" _You are NOT dying on me, not after this horrendousness that you've pulled! And you're definitely not dying like mama did! _Inhaling, she bit her lower lip and in one fluid motion brought her lips to his, exhaling deeply as she laid him flat against the mattress. Conscientiously, she pinched his nose, and tried again, only to get blood in her mouth. 

_I…I don't know what the hell I'm doing. _She pulled away. Seconds elapsed to no avail. _This is it Yuffie, he's gone to the happy hunting ground._ She sniffled and pounded the mattress again.

"Kisaragi," She entreated gently in a failing voice, biting back her sobs. The ninja closed her watering eyes, and then opened them again, forming tiny flecks of tears around their lids. She ruffled her hair, only to have it slip back into order as she freed it, and smiled at him through an unraveling composure. 

"You like to call me that, right bastard? Well, get up! I'm not through with you yet, so…" Her voice withered away in her throat.

"…wake up." Her slender fingers slipped into his hair, her smile sanguine and crooked. Yuffie's blood spattered body shuddered and she laughed, touching his forehead grimly.

"You…all of you, damn it! Where will it end?!" _He's gone, _She realized. _He's gone, and I can do nothing about it right now. He was dead. I couldn't help him… maybe if I rest…what kind of idiot am I?_ She conducted her gaze to his corpse with lassitude brought on by panic, eyeing the gashes warily. _Maybe I should just go, perhaps before someone raps on Vincent's door and discovers me looming over a dead body. Yes, I should go before it comes to that. What the hell am I thinking?_ Gulping down tears, she knelt against the headboard, pressing her fingers into her cheeks. 

"You've really done it this time, Yuffie." She rasped, clamping her eyes shut. There were no ambulances to call, all of the hospitals had been shut down months ago, and the clinics were only open until four, and they couldn't handle patients of this magnitude. And he _was_ dead, pretty much as soon as she reached him. Within seconds, Yuffie fell asleep from the duress.

_It's really dark_…Vincent sighed, but couldn't budge. His eyes scanned nothing but full blackness. Well, at least I can postulate that this is the realm of the living. Hojo would be here mocking me otherwise. He felt the fangs grow in his mouth, and tried to move, tried to provide some warning to Yuffie, who might still be present. Who might not be alive…he tried to call out to her, but his lips were suspended. He tried to see, but he was too badly injured to distinguish one neutral tone from another in the lightless space encompassing his still form. The blood sweltered in his mouth, and the fangs grew longer still, more acicular than the last, pushing out the remnants of the teeth that littered underneath his tongue. Hollow fangs that were not of venom; ideal for the subsistence off… There was an ingredient to life, to preservation, that he craved. His eyes were clouded now with a blue haze—to sense motion? He did not know, could not know what else he was becoming. Somewhere, deep within, the human would prevail, heal; but there was another side coming, a brutal mechanical efficiency that served for consciousness, and it bore fangs. It protracted from death, was death in one of its many forms. 

_Not again. Please. No more of this._

Its nostrils burst with the smell of something sumptuous and foreign, the extravagance of joy filled it with renewing energy. _Blood!_ The new brain cried jovially, and it reached out, grasping with mottled fingers, peering out at the world from behind two malicious blue eyes. The cuts had lessened, and it saw the movement, saw the smoothness that had made the movement. It threaded its tongue through its teeth; gleeful delusions of masticated bones slovenly decorating its lair. '_Visions of sugarplum faeries--my ass.'_ It stopped. Not even having a moderate subhuman level of thinking, it hesitated at where the sounds might have come from. Its hunger could not heed, could not wait much longer. It stretched its functioning arm voraciously. 

Something slimy and thin connected with her exposed back, and Yuffie started, shrieking. Her forehead collided with the wall, followed by a muffled yell as she slid onto the mattress. There she had lain, out of breath; when the beast, whatever it was, set upon her, its claws coiled at her collarbone, pressing into her skin. She screamed and clawed back, tumbling off the bed, bringing the creature with her. 

"Gawd! Help! Somebody!" She cried volubly, but not loud enough to alarm anyone in say… a three-foot radius. Of course… Her bitterness increasing, she gave this vicissitude of him her harshest kick, but it came as a rather a disadvantage. Even more irate, the being muscled down, compressing her against the floor, making her immobile. She cried out vainly, but the creature was uncompromising, and she let out another groaning plea before capitulating to its prowess. Her back hit the floor abrasively and she grunted, glancing up into inhuman eyes. Gawd…oh, shit! Pressed against the floor, the petit ninja, in all of her thickheaded, unwarranted helplessness, began to fray. Her throat dried and coated with gravel, and her legs collapsed under the pressure like matchsticks. A sharp pain from the contortion of her knee sobered her for an instant, just as Vincent bore down on her. 

"Stop it!" She kneed her adversary again treacherously, shielding her throat with her arms. The creature snarled and batted her wrists away, its menacing teeth were just an inch from her shoulder, and just as instantaneously it had paused, shaking its head dazedly. Agape, still pinned to the ground, Yuffie observed this phenomenon, amazed that her histrionics were of use at all. In the nominal situation, a predator like this never would have hesitated to rip the jugular from the prey animal's throat. _Why?_ The motives were moot pointed. 

_Well_, she thought wryly, _at least I can rely on _you_ to have a guilty conscience_. Vincent, whatever he had become now, looked at her with blue eyes, burning at high intensity in his skull, and buried his head in the crook of her shoulder. A searing pain blinded her momentarily as he bit into her flesh, and then it decreased as warm blood welled up underneath the punctured skin. _Hmm,_ another thought entered her head just before her thoughts exploded into sheer confusion and panic, _isn't this interesting._ Yuffie Kisaragi, daughter of Godo, unleashed a fractured scream into the night, unable to do anything else. 

He bit deeper, causing more pain, and she grew slack; the creature drank from her shoulder, not her neck, she observed. Faintness set in, and the victim passed out from fright. Somewhere, the mind of the beast processed this. The blood would not come so quickly now. The prey… The creature withdrew and slumped over with a moan, baring its fangs with a tinge of pain and confusion. The blue eyes dimmed, flickering with red. The fangs retracted, leaving blood and pulp. Lips curled back in disdain and the creature retched, wiping the dew of blood away hurriedly, gasping over it all; cleaning his face with quaking, dirtied sleeves. 

"..._Again_?" His voice was a key of melancholy, of astonishment and self-disgust. His igneous red orbs adjusted to the dim light, and Vincent looked down at the stolid girl in horror. Yuffie Kisaragi, lying cold against the floor, did not answer him. Could not answer him. Residual blood lingered in his mouth. Hers? His? In his state of confusion, it didn't much matter…

"Yuffie?" Unresponsive. Her dress had been seared off of her shoulder; her skin exposed and defiled with the gorges…the marks he had made with his teeth. The dark purple centers of the lacerations he found, to his chagrin, still appealing, though it sickened the human in him to the core. _No…_Vincent tried to shake the thought off, tried to appease his system by recalling memories of other, lighter times, but the limbic brain wouldn't remit. _No, please… I don't want to hurt… stop…_ His eyelids clamped shut, and the fangs punctured his bottom lip. _I want to die…I need to die…I can't…she's wounded…_Tingling with nausea, he stared single-mindedly at the holes he had forged in her. As he neared her side he regained himself, closing his eyes and keeping his shaking hands from furtherance of the nightmare. Vincent started humming a merry ditty about three men stuck at sea, an elementary school rhythm that required some memory on his part. His teeth clenched as a preventative measure against lapping her blood, afraid he could not forego the urges. No new blood issued from the wounds, and so he sighed, relieved of the impulses that he had felt before, but feeling less than human for it. Vincent keened, bringing his fist to his mouth, suppressing a cry perfuse with tears. Lacing his fingers over her arms, he imagined the redemption of his barrel within reach, but he had long since rid his place of guns in some moronic attempt to feel human by following their ideological example of passivity. Yes…he was stupid…like _them_. Vincent sighed in deep exasperation, digging his nails into the flesh of his palm, driving his metal fingertips into his eyelid. He paused lethargically and opened his eyes, and red eyes became the darkness once again.

_You dumb girl…so it wasn't alone your fault…_

Bemusing as this gruesomeness was, he caught himself noticing the shape of her forehead, and how it molded into her closed eyes, and the converging arcs of her chin. __

"Wake up." He murmured concernedly, and, since command clearly wasn't enough effort, he reached out and fondled her hair, uncertainty mingling with intimations of his own bleak perversion. Blood shaded his shaking lips, covered his hands, and seemingly colored his eyes. He thought of leaving that broken city for whatever loomed still in nature of his first love's cave. First love? He suppressed the thought with a shudder, looking back to Yuffie's cuts as the embodiment of their separate dooms. The skin around them was porcelain perfection, something favored in Wutai. He assumed that fright, coupled with blood loss and what he was certain was a form of anorexia, had made her this way.

He edged still closer to her recumbent form, lifted her by the waist on the grounds that her shoulder didn't look exactly optional, and examined the raw contusions, which were all around very clean and barely punctured the coetaneous layer. His index finger slipped into her hair, pushing it back, and flinched as he knelt there with her, filled with dissolution. _Still, I needn't have bitten her. Proffering a band-aid won't make it go away either. She's going to scar. And her father is going to see it whenever she wears a low-cut shirt, which won't exactly bode well for his disposition or her reputation. Of course, bane enough to her already, she'll likely kill me. The only thing I have to look forward to in life is Yuffie Kisaragi ending it…_

"…At least _you'll_ live." As if the gentleness of his tone recalled her conscious, Yuffie emerged from her darkness, inhaling deeply and opening her eyes. Her slight frame stirred, and, a look of condemnation spread across her face as she beheld Vincent, which quickly was overcome by confusion and terror. She jerked and flung an arm around his neck, and before he knew it, he had his index finger to her lips. 

"Don't worry. It's ended. Shh…shush. Hush." She stared in terror, but Vincent had avoided contact with her eyes in an abashed way that suggested at least that he was harrowed but otherwise all right again. Coughing, she hesitantly looked him over in limp curiosity and intense fright. It was true; the mannerisms and his physicality were a telltale version of the Vincent she knew best, like the scoria colored eyes he possessed once more. His eyes. From what she could tell his eyes were calm now, and unwitting of the fear she felt inside, the fear that had consumed her since the moment she found him lying pained and prone. Forcing himself to look at her, he swallowed. The marks on her skin stung with the bite of a thick layer of smoke—she did everything she could not to wheeze.

"You're dead." She murmured weakly, still clinging hopelessly to his neck. Her eyes were still locked on his, and Vincent watched her with an almost queasy look of breathlessness. Far-flung as his hopes of living past her anger would be she was agitating the gnawing hysteria within him; he could not help but welcome any rush of mindlessness the world proffered him. 

"You're…" 

_"Yuffie, please, PLEASE shut up! I'm not dead; we're both very much alive, no thanks to either one of us."_ Realizing that this might have been the wrong thing to say, he inclined his head morbidly, and accidentally touched the tip of her nose with his lips. Dazed, and the want of comfort induced upon his senses, he inclined his head downward, ever so slightly, molding his lips against hers nervously. Yuffie's rattled mind became a whirlwind of incomprehension and incognizance. Her hand impulsively went up, and then, she relaxed, numbed by the unusual sensation of two cold, dry, bloody pieces of skin being pressed against her mouth. The kiss tapered off rapidly; Vincent, as if he couldn't flee fast enough, loosened his hold on her and opened his eyes, aware of his overture in light of the situation and appalled at his resolution. _My, my, my, now haven't we become the imbecilic macho conqueror of…damn it all…damn it ALL to eternal HELL!!!!! Yuffie? Of all the women…better yet…she isn't even technically a WOMAN yet, you stupid egocentric profligate! _ Blinking, he numbly beheld the petit girl, the situation beyond his, if anyone's, comprehension anymore. 

What had made the occasion worse was the slim possibility that she enjoyed it.

To make all of his horrors real Yuffie sighed mellifluously, her eyes closed. And then she suddenly remembered herself. As if her reaction was as swift and automatic as his, her hand connected sharply with his face, jarring him from whatever agonies were roiling through his head at that moment in time. His troubled eyes disengaged from hers; his arms recoiled, and with celerity he found his way a good several yards aback, looking sorely bewildered and yet…relieved. _No wonder he wants to commit suicide_, she thought achingly, sitting up and padding her arm down, refusing to look him in the eye. I'm not bleeding much, as of the moment, she realized, although they both were covered in matter that would turn a rusted yellow against their skin by morning. Instinctively, she fingered the wound. Though it went into her shoulder, his bite hadn't been too severe. She heaved, a baleful glint in her dark eyes. 

"Yuffie," He spoke, dread in his eloquent tone. He had cleared his throat in the genteel way of a man preparing for the wrath of war, but having several diffusive comments that, if only they could be heard out, would resolve instantly all belligerences generated in the first place. As tantalizing as his pitch could become, his was the last voice she wanted to hear right then. 

"Damn you Vincent!" Foregoing handling the situation on his terms, she climbed to her feet in a rage. The sheer power of her stance actually took him further aback into the shadow. His misty red eyes seemed wider than she had remembered them ever becoming.

"The precursor was a dead shock…nearly literally. I couldn't think. I'm sorry. And, and you just kept staring at me…It was the only thing I could think to do to alleviate the situation, bring an emotional leverage, I guess… Damn it all!" He thundered, glancing at the table with surrendering patience. 

"You _idiot_! You're only interfering with the inevitable!"

"I'll meddle with whatever I like!" Yuffie snarled, and then altogether stopped, her eyes opening to the threshold of their expansion.

"What inevitable are you talking about?" She queried stonily, her glance vacant. Vincent's oriental hair gleamed in the sallow light of impending dawn, and his turbid red eyes burrowed into her skull with such intensity that she backed away. He was quavering a little, caught between awareness of the grotesqueness of his life and potentially ripping her apart, the wolf who would sacrifice the babes of the bird that aided him. Hair dangling shapelessly over his face in jagged streaks, bloodshot eyes and baring teeth—Yuffie was an unprotected fawn stumbling into the den of a lone and quite dangerous creature. The thought didn't leave her for a while, until his eyes dimmed, his anger moldered, and he spoke. 

"I want to die."

"You died." She said automatically, and then released a sigh.

"Do you mean to tell me that you tried to do yourself in?" The dark-haired creature nodded, lethargy pulling his head downward.

"I've been dying lately."

"You…_died_." Her voice rang somewhat louder this time.

"…An expert now are we?" There was another long, terrible pause.

"I'm sorry if that came across as pert, but you don't understand."

"Oh yes," Rejoined Yuffie, gazing at him disdainfully. "I'm just an idiot. A stupid little girl…" Her hands, akimbo, clenched to fists, and she tossed her head, revealing through her slips of hair two penetrative eyes, pitiless and angry. 

"…Not only do you have to be _undead_, but you have to prove yourself right. All the time. Every moment. Every day. You're like a carbon copy of my father, only marginally better looking, which doesn't say much, does it? Now you want me to feel sorry for you—'oh, look at poor little suicidal me' and yet you fend me off, don't want my help. After all, I'm just a stupid little girl to you—that's it, isn't it? You want it _cheap_? Find a prostitute! I've had enough of this to last me a lifetime you odiously contradictory misogynist!!" From his vantage point, the bewildered non-human could only look on in sheer apology, but he knew, or at least felt, that his affront was far from abatable.

There was a crash in the background as Yuffie vented by overturning something, and then all went silent for at least a minute. A resounding crash followed, marked by a few shouts and shrill, furious screeches. As far as fight or flight was concerned, Yuffie could take up the former better than the latter.

"I am not going to be led around! Now, TELL me what is going ON!!!!"

Dawn

Yuffie, although corroded by anger and dissipating, hadn't forgotten about the eerie truth that she digested, although she was eager to try her luck at selective memory, if it would so assuage the bubble of unease that she had felt since. Vincent was at the foot of the bed, cross-legged, immersing himself in eerie silence, dressed in a nostalgic red and black ensemble with his arms outstretched. Meditation, he had informed her with feigned stoicism, giving her a look that she translated to mean that he wanted someone to hold him, but was just too stubborn to ask. 

Perhaps it was her imagination, desperately trying to slot the events of last night into familiar terms. After all, it was a common emotion of hers, too.

Vincent gazed downward. He was indirectly displaying the bruise on his forehead where she had struck him with a weighty was of pamphlets that, up until that horrible moment, had been lying underneath his bed amid the dust bunnies and pellets of life-ending prussic acid. Despite the languid feel that this morning particularly brought, Yuffie was wide-awake, a frenetic and disabling neurosis at work within her, her gaze conveying what both of them could easily acknowledge.

"You should be dead," she seemed to accuse. He didn't want it to end like that—dying right there in her arms. It scared the hell out of her. And so it was a conundrum beyond her capacity; he was dead, suddenly reanimated, that was that. She shouldn't have to think of it—after all it made her suffer. 

Her brows drew together, opening a scab above her right eye. She had already long since dreaded the answer; now it was only a matter of fearfully anticipating an end to the wait for it. Jenova cells, and a god-forsaken crank scientist…

"Hojo did this…" She began, but was cut off by his tranquil stare. Vincent's face gradually inclined; a nod, she presumed, and came back up, settling on hers with evenness and the smallest tincture of dejection. There was a leather cord, red, running through his hair, where blood matted because it was drawn too tight to his scalp. She sighed, fingering her forehead sassily.

"Never mind. I knew. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure that mess of yours out." Vincent gave a generous obeisance in his requiem of silence and, while still looking at her with pond-calm pathos, steepled his hands against his nose.

"Hojo made me immortal, Yuffie." He castigated in his plantain manner, his red eyes flaring like a torch suddenly. He was interposing as he saw fit, something that Yuffie had challenged but would probably never break. The mere mention of Hojo to him commanded everlasting vitriol.

"Yes," She gave him a frugal smile. "But immortal doesn't mean invincible, does it?" 

"It does for me," Came his ironically wistful explanation. "He didn't want me to ever destroy myself, or be destroyed." A sour smirk came to his thin features, but they were the least of her consternations.  Those fierce, celestial red eyes burned into her, vibrant and baleful, confused and callow, suffering the mounting misery of his eternal punishment, from which there was little escape. Nothing lasted in his world, especially not allegiances. She urged herself to offer him her hand, which he looked at as dubiously as if she was still offering him her panties.

"Take it." She ordered, her face flushing a little imperiously. "It is the least you can do after trying to make a snack outta me." Without further ado he took the outstretched hand, and, somewhere underneath that hair, she could detect an eyebrow piquing.

"What does this prove?" He asked uneasily, his stiff digits shrinking from her slender touch. Of course, it was difficult to grasp some of the more outstanding traits she might angst to find within him. His movement, particularly, was evasive, and hence vexing. 

"I don't know, really. Perhaps friendship." She nodded with uncertainty, and for a moment her body was thrown into limbo as another, in her long list of single-most aberrational events in her life came to pass. Edging his fingers onto the platy surface of her palm, Vincent leaned forward, conducting his steady gaze with the uttermost devotion to scrutiny. His hand warmed against hers, and Yuffie skipped a breath, delaying it in case that the moment should fail. _I'm curious_, she thought in the flighty mode that befits someone incongruous with her environment and therefore perfectly immune to it. _He shouldn't morph into a demon if I don't give him any reason to, and I deduce that simply cuddling his shoulder won't bring me death. Kissing proved possible, too. Bloody and icky, but possible._ Fidgeting, he brought her hopes to annihilation when his fingers struggled loose.

"Friendship, then?" The leeway she had granted with him was an immense mistake. He wondered of this critically, staring at her in an emphatic style that made him ever the more sensuous and intellectually inaccessible in her mind. 

"Yuffie, I nearly killed you. You _did_ excessively hate me for it last night…" Grave, disappointed, how else was one supposed to sound when met with such gleefully idiotic pursuance of an idyll so far out of reach, that it would take millions of virtually impossible light years to attain it?

"Eh, what can I say? I'm a very forgiving sort." She brandished her hand again encouragingly, and he once again waved it aside, growing agitated.

"Don't you find your behavior self-destructive? I would." 

"I'm not going to deride you this time Vincent. You were that… thing. And a lot dumber last night, if I may add." Impulsively, and for no good reason, he glanced down at her cleavage, nestled in her black low-cut shirt, and inwardly screamed in fright. Gathering his scattered thoughts, he placed his fingers betwixt each other and drew his chin downward with his eyes closed in the fashion of one who means to make a failing point.

"Oh I see. So I am exculpated due to forces which were within my ability to…" black _cut off thingie_ "…control?"

"They…hey! If you could actually control it as you say, then why did you bite me? Hunh? Because you can't control yourself—at all." Whether the…other happening of the night before could be alimented to this involuntary ability as well, she did not know. 

"Don't be so quickly presumptive Kisaragi." He deplored quietly. A faint color in his cheeks bespoke of a future of relentless self-discipline on his part.

"Well…maybe you can…but I haven't seen it. You musta been…critical. You know. It's probably the only way you turned at all, because I did something to the batty blood-sucking, _pain-in-the-ass_…thing you turned into."

"Perhaps. But, I have come to the conclusion that there is limited safety around me." Before she could intone, he fastened his eyes onto hers with crestfallen decisiveness. "I'd know; far more than you ever could. I'm your," His eyes flitted, as if he was searching for a word in his memory banks that could describe them equally.

"Friend, Vin. The word you're looking for is friend." He looked up at her for a split second, his eyes clouded over with concern for the word conveyed. 

"…And I must profess your judgment…"

"Is acceptable." She responded, watching as his jaw clenched in annoyance.

"Skewed." He contradicted her, running a hand through his hair. His jaw seemed to disarticulate with its movement, but it was clear that such movements were obstructed with hominid anatomy for now. They sighed in unison, deeply, exasperated, and looked to one another accusingly. Yuffie was steadfast, he reasoned, and proficient when it came to getting her way. This was his prevalent notion of her, a selfish brat, headstrong, intimidating in her willfulness, essentially backward and clumsy without any redeeming qualities. No, these were the views of others. Vincent had always tried to examine deeper than the external realm of human beings. In his state, he had no choice. Just as mishaps can occur randomly and are usually difficult to assign blame to, the punishment of misgivings can at times result in similar introspection. Yuffie, he had found, was more complex than others gave her credit for. In a sense she wanted these labels, this voyeuristic, decadent lifestyle. It was electrifying. It dazzled. It brought her admiration from lowlifes, which were worldly enough to suit her curiosity. She was not, in any means, troubled. She had found her niche in life. It was simply that, her interests were deeper, more expansive, than what her world provided for her. Her mind was the untilled soil of an even greater one; she just had too often misapplied her interests in exchange for the myopic ones. But he wasn't going to preach, no. Yuffie was who she was, and it was her potential, not the tragedy of it, that interested him. There wasn't tragedy or failure in an ongoing experiment, and, so long as Yuffie thrived, she cultivated new interests and chose even more intriguing paths. And, like a mouse in a laboratory maze, it would lead to the big payoff. Yes. Sooner or later, Yuffie would have her cheese, and Vincent, in a pseudo sense, (since he desperately wanted to end his bleak existence) wanted to stick around and see the look on her face. 

Yuffie glanced over at Vincent, a glimmer of something in her eye. 

"I'm not going anywhere." She declared. Vincent capitulated, raising a hand to relay that his endurance had been met.

"Suit yourself. And, Yuffie?"

"Yes?"

"Your…bite mark is…showing."

A City

"How much longer?" Cid's query went, for the time being, unheeded by the mélange of uniforms scuffling across the Highwind Bridge. There were much more crucial actions that called for so much more of their attention. For over three hours now the little airship had been caterpillar crawling its way over the sound. Red Thirteen, much like Barret, Shera, Mrs. Gainsborough and their capricious young ward, Marlene, had either evacuated the plane or had cached themselves away in some clandestine meeting place, such as one of the remaining cargo crates from when Shinra controlled the airship. _'Visions of sugarplum faeries, my ass'_—Cid shook his head in disbelief. Cloud's sardonic phrases would resurface in his memory banks at times of inopportunity and their appurtenance would make even the most idiotic of them seem sagely. One thing about Cloud that Cid admired was the numbskull's tact with such matters. After all, it's not like he ever said anything about a shiny gold wire of hope, although he recounted it needlessly.

"Ghaah." Cid wheezed, glancing over the deck. The others weren't aboard; they had probably abandoned him hours ago. To use as bait? No, Barret probably wanted to get Marlene and the widow situated in a small town somewhere and head back for them later. _That man, chivalric as he is mesomorphic—well, sort of._ Cid never quite understood chivalry, and had only committed it once, when he abandoned his future to save some lame-ass physicist's present. And for what? The maiden couldn't even cook well, and his days of chasing dragons, so to speak, rusted over two decades of refurbishing to no avail. From his point of view, the maiden should've been torched and the hero should've made the cover of the Midgar Science Journal, but in the real world, Cid had already proven himself mushier than canned tomatoes at heart. He glanced up, the jetty of wind rushing over the back of his head, brushing his bristly blonde hair forward. Inclining his head to avoid the wind gusts, the entire scope of the zenith and horizon were revealed. He cursed; utilizing a most psychedelic catchphrase he had invented eons before recent events. It was back in the day when he lived in what was now Rocket-Town before he had ever struck for enterprise with Shinra, back in the day when he was a prospering farmhand who had just learned to fly a plane on old Shadarach's airfield. He was fifteen, and he had used it before describing Schuler's expansive acreage, which he had later dusted with weed killer just to ease his anger against the ancient. Had it not been the airfield, it would have been the geriatric bohemian poet that owned it. 

"Well, milk my ass and call me Bessie." Neo-Midgar was just a little to the left on the horizon, built atop a blaze of red, a fault; still shuddering from the stress Meteor had created. Promised land? Cid shook his head, deluged with awareness of it all. He closed his eyes, refusing to admit the repugnant scene for a prolonged amount of time. 

"They never learn." He whispered, shaking his head once more. One of the crewmembers seemed stunned, but if he had sympathized, he certainly didn't acknowledge it. Strangely enough, he thought, that his contemplation should again revert to Cloud, wherever he was. Fearless leader—surely, but Cloud represented something else to them, was an icon of some greater heroism that no one else could grasp, conqueror of a feat far beyond anyone else's capabilities, forfeiter of the Promised Land. Yes, he was almost messianic in that sense, and he never would have respected this. Neo-Midgar was exactly what the name had to stand for: it was tantamount to reasoning that someone should recreate a city and term it Neo-Carthage. 

Hate This Place

11 ½ hours later…

"I'm going out."

"For what purpose?" 

"Rest." His invincibility to her verbal arguments crumbling, he retreated from her stare sulkily and devised to head back into the room.

"And Vincent?"

"What?" Came his terse response, one of many in an outstanding history of laconic responses. Yuffie sighed, shaking her crisp bob of dark hair at his obstinacy, amusement minced with frustration eminent in her eyes. 

"I'm taking your suit to be dry cleaned."

"My best one?" Tacit again, succinct as they came, tall, dark, and especially dangerous and reserved. Yuffie shook her head, allowing for the fact that he hadn't interacted with people thirty years prior to their meeting, and that to this day he hardly trusted them.

"Heh. Your only one! And Oish, does it look fragile? What've you been doing, storing it since Lucrecia?" His eyes were red beads of suspicion, and the tinge in his voice of it was a revelation to her ears. Was he always so acute, or was it her fractious little ploys that warranted this attentiveness?

"Hey, don't think I'm getting the better of you." She protested mildly, the look on her face suggesting indeed that this was irrefutably true. Braced in the doorjamb, he continued to watch her a little too accusingly than she found optimal for her motives. He leered; redoubtable, unimpeachable from a hard-earned station at the crumbling lead paint of his door. Well, she'd just see about that. Sighing, she drove him back into the room with her palms, ushering him in silence back to his bed.

"Yuffie." He emitted a disaffected groan, and she impassively shoved him further into the threadbare state that he was familiarized with as a habitat. Even in daylight, the coffin would have seemed cheerier. The tangibility of the cloth of his donned suede jacket irritated the surface of her fingertips, and she eagerly pushed him the extra feet, and with extreme force, onto his bed, (which had been covered with a clean blanket.) where he lie on his belly, a look of avant-garde on his face. Of course, there was a subsequent moan of disapproval before another entreaty could be met with the appropriate gravity.

"Kisaragi…" His death tone brought immense jubilation to her already vast, sadistic grin. Leaning over his currently inactive form she clasped his shoulders in a light, affable shake, jostling his lanky body. His breathing restricted by the odd position he was lying in, he attempted to lift himself up, to turn around and throttle her in his low-key rancor. Nevertheless, she probably would have imposed this frivolous, unexpected mothering of hers upon him eventually. _Justifiable, absolutely justifiable homicide…_He closed his eyes placidly, negating all other thought, and just let her pin him there. _Is she satisfied?_ He wondered at this. It was idiotic and against the facts to venture to say that the events of the night before affected her ability to distract herself with the trivial. 

"Yuffie?" The ninja giggled and the pressure on his shoulders subsided. Almost instantly Vincent was on his feet, but the door was gaping open and the reformed Materia thief was gone, having pilfered his wallet instead. Vincent sighed, and slumped over the covers, throwing himself down in his chagrin. Finding solace there, and, unmoving for several minutes, he inhaled deeply, his senses taking in the faint odor of wild hyacinth vine, sea salts, and honeysuckle. Knowing instinctively their origins, and aghast at the almost primal comfort he found in the perfume, he gasped and withdrew. The smell continued to linger on his cheeks, and as much as every contingent of his brain submissive to intellectual faculties was repulsed by it, the perfume had pleasantly tingled his olfactory organs. This, he reasoned, was worthy of a moment's lapse of musing—he fell back onto the bed with an amorous sigh, rolling onto his back like an idle schoolgirl. Please, the logically derisive side of his brain protested. You're going and thinking the unthinkable about Yuffie…he sighed again, well aware that his momentary happiness would be followed later with mental flagellation, some of which he had already begun. _This is outrageous_, he thought, pressing his face into the covers blissfully. _Right. Just keep telling yourself that, and the nonsense she's imparted will make sense, your mistakes will be abetted, and you will have gone unpunished for your crimes. She's rescuing you from yourself, this headstrong little girl, all by herself, because you didn't give anyone the slightest idea that your inclinations were to overmedicate yourself into arrest. And the worst part is that she loves you, or looks up to you, and you're a fool, a silly ethnic boy from Junon like you were then, just torn by your past and the dreadful present. You are liable to kill—her, or someone, and it's never going to be the first time you did it, but it will be the worst. The last of your humanity is hovering fatally.  _His gut wrenched, and he arched his back protectively, his eyes watering as his fingers sought the headboard just out of his range. Blood. Rum. Toxin. The bedclothes were an overture of this, and yet her airy scent stole other miseries and preoccupation away from him. _A seventeen year old_, he chastised himself, finally succeeding in clutching the iron headboard. _I'm attracted to…the scent of a seventeen year old. God. _He shifted turgidly, putting his metallic arm over the bridge of his nose, embracing the sobering chill of the alloy against his face. _What a coup de grace, Hojo. You really have fashioned a monster._

Al Araaf…and Zinfandel

Cid clambered up the steeply inclined staircase leading to the access portal of the city itself, his gaunt, leathery face suffused with the grimness of his profound realization. Red Thirteen and Barret were waiting for him, Barret's gun arm pinned against the wall, Red appearing tested. A selfsame look of dismay had crossed Barrett's dark features.

"Glad my little darling didn't see this." He replied, indicating the towering minarets billowing steam and lifestream product from deep within the city's infrastructure. "Bein' a little girl, she mighta' found all this majestic."

"Or terrifying." Red Thirteen remarked solemnly. Barret gave him a frugal smile and nodded.

"Jes' the way my wife and the womin of my village used to think of the Shinra and Midgar. They all thought it was a change, somethin' exitin'. No one saw it as a great mistake. An' I know that Marlene used to look up inta' the city, probably imaginin' a better life that don't exist. She only four years old. I cin't be havin' her exposed to elements like this." 

"Cogent, my friend." Red complimented liquidly. "You have a father's love for the girl."

"Got that right." Barret snorted, a blush of pride sweltering his cheeks. "Marlene's my daughter, they ain't no contest to that. An' I think it's good that she has a mother figure now also. She gonna grow up an' go to a good school, my Marlene." He didn't finish with his usual, 'when I find that spikey white-assed mercenary an' kick her schoolin' money outta him' this time. Cid took that as a boon that things were on the upshot for once, even in spite of the ostensible evils being conducted industrially in the city that drew its namesake from that which nearly eliminated mankind, that brought forth Jenova and extreme suffering: a quixotic idea of fiscal pragmatism, but merely that; a quixotic adventure in marketing.

"So, what're we waiting for?" Cid asked. 

"For some damned ex-Shinra doctor that we cin't even trust." Barret responded. Red Thirteen thumped his tail in protest. 

"Now he's just a benevolent old man…"

"A Shinra's a Shinra." Barret replied adamantly. 

"You didn't feel that way about Cloud." Red argued. 

"Feasible point. But he was still mucking things up." Barret sallied. Neither had noticed the crinkled little form acceding them from behind the gate, its hair looking like a disconnected entity altogether that had swooped down to roost on its head. _Perhaps a great big chicken,_ Cid mused, watching the pint-sized being.

"Um." Cid began. The pink haze that comprised the entrance gate faded into particle oblivion as the figure passed through, bypassed a startled Red Thirteen and Barret, and approached Cid. From what he could tell of the figure, swathed in a laboratory coat much too large for him, the man was wrinkled facially as well, and quite aged looking. His blue eyes gleamed jovially from underneath thick snowy eyebrows.

"Professor…" Red addressed with deference, but the man's attention was focused elsewhere.

"Nym?" He inquired happily. Cid, incapable of decrypting his accent, scratched a dry patch on his face.

"Hunh?"

"Nym?" The scientist submitted in the verisimilar tone as before. Cid's brow furrowed.

"Name?" He asked. The professor chuckled. Aside, Red Thirteen crouched near Barret, trying to remain out of the professor's earshot.

"See what I mean? This venerable, and quite accomplished one; is entirely harmless."

"Still a Shinra, even if he ain't no more." Barret replied defensively, crossing his beefy arms.

The professor chuckled and gagged; looking up smartly at Cid, whose eyes normally glowed like defused firecrackers.

                "I sk'd y-oo fir-erst." Cid gave Barret a maudlin look. The Professor was no more than a senescent child. The senescent child removed and activated a small black electrical box, which has been in his coat pocket moments before, in what some might deem a sheepish manner.

                "Nym?"

                "Um…Cid."

                "Good." He replied promptly, cracking a delightful little smile, which was not without its manic properties. The process of encoding Cid's name was caducean indeed. The elder gave him a satyr's look, and waddled over to Barret, putting the device out at arm's fullest length for him.

                "Nym?" The gnarled old fool was rather delighted in this. Barret summed up the recorder with blasé.

                "I ain't gonna." He declined stiffly. The professor exchanged a gleeful glance with no one, obviously confused.

                "It's the only way you can enter." Red cautioned, to which Barret snorted.

                "They got it all sorted out then. C'mon boy! Ain't you got no sense?! Somebody who goes through alla this trouble to keep people out ain't gonna let people go. An' then you have another Shinra!" 

                "Now Barret," Red chided, an action that seemed conjacent to Tifa's remonstration. _Now isn't that clever?_ Cid thought, gazing out at the idyllic seascape. The sun was setting now, everything had grown dusky, and evening was springing from the ground. The cooler air stifled some of the stronger scents of oil about him, and the coolness proffered him a few seconds of arcadia before he was awoken by the need to intervene in the lasting argument.

                The Professor literally whizzed past him, expelling a little shout of malaise as he winded over the steps. Red Thirteen stood squarely before Barret, who had crossed his arms once more, his smile revealing that it was indeed this cat that had eaten the canary.

                 "Contented, are we?" Red balked, his one-eyed gaze quite possibly odious. Barret obviously cared nothing for the reprimand that was to come.

                "You had no right to do that to the professor! He's an old classmate of grandfather's!"

                "You ain't gonna tell me that what they're doing here isn't completely WRONG."

                "…Maybe. But the professor hasn't any part in it. Besides, wouldn't you like to investigate?"

                "No! I've got enough blood on my hands as it is. I don't need no more." Cid went from a slight hum to a lively whistle, and then started up toward the gate, taking the boldest, most unconditional strides of his life, what little he had done living in it. What the hell? If he survived, he was going to skin them both, cover them with talcum powder, and use them as foot mats. Cid passed by, whistling volubly, as loudly, it seemed, as he possibly could. Gallivanting on jaunty legs, straight up to the defense shield.

                "Cid!" Nanaki hailed, to which Cid gave an obdurate rustle of his jacket. _So much for small favors, _he thought, wondering what made him crack this far, trying to accuse his past, but slowly veering toward his present as an answer to all. He helped save the planet. Big whoop. They just reinvented the killing process. All that precious work for nothing, just like the rocket…

He had to be in there…he had to know what was going on. If he didn't make it—fair enough. It would compel the other two to get off of their duffs and do something.

                "Cid, you dumbass!" No turning back. Cid Highwind shifted his goggles in salute. He took another fate determining step forward.

                Crackle. Crackle. Waaaaazzappp!!!

Deck of Spades

Tifa wrestled down the anxiety as she fumbled with the radio, and the name kept replaying her mind. Cloud. Cloud. Cloud. Cloud. Cloud. His name grew increasingly distinct. Her anxiety levels nearly burst, and she drew back her tongue in the vortex of her mouth, crushing it against the roof as she worked out the frequency for the infernal radio station, which advertised itself as the best in the Midgar limits. Somehow, she wasn't buying it, but it was one of the few decent stations in use. She turned it up, blasted with the despairing tunes of Pasteboard Lightning's slightly more upbeat song, _Mortis Amicus_:_ Amisi, Amabaris, Nonne Cognovisti?_ In the proper mood to listen to such morbidity, She plopped down on her miserable, patchy couch and drew her legs up until her body was in a natal position, her back against the staunchest corner of the said piece of furniture. To her, the song was an astringing impetus for returning to her inner sanctum of torment, where she paid homage to her god of masochism and unfair concatenence:

_Summer's breezes bind all around us,_

_Light is fading into the darkness,_

_Did you know the sea has mystical dreams?_

_Did you know I dreamed of you?_

_Can you feel that pulsing through me?_

_You never pulled me from the depths._

_If you fall into the deepening waves,_

_Will you resurface?_

_Faintly intertwining,_

_I see our fate is to perish young._

_Steeped in just repining,_

_Have you ever, ever felt so wrong?_

                She drew her limber arms up over her head, suppressing the taunting sobs that burbled in her throat, demanding escape. She wanted to blister Reno's temporal lobes with a skillet, but couldn't resist the beckon call of her despondency for anything beyond a precious moment here, filled with the pearl stones that embellished her ears. Her face was, decidedly, ugly, she thought as she gazed into the mirror on the wall. Imperfect. Too old, too bold and much too dark. Cloud was a knight. He needed a Petrarchan beauty, and someone with a conscience, someone that chivalry would matter to the most. Someone sweet and innocent, like Aeris. Someone that even she, the rival, could grow attached to and befriend. Overall, he needed someone who wasn't a mere hostess in a bar. And so it was unremitting love, unrequited, lost to the uninvited haplessness that came and went called Aeris, adorable, pretty, luminous Aeris. 

There was little left for her, and few emollients that could soothe the flagrance with which she tormented herself over his disappearance. Estranged, alone, with no one to turn to, and bloody Reno there, hands incarnadine with blood of her allies, tempting fate:

_Times are changing and there's no place to wander._

_Darkness creeps in; tears us all asunder._

_Come on you hear it,_

_You near it,_

_You crave its embrace._

_You breathe it,_

_You seek it,_

_In this worldly place._

_                And now I wonder._

_                Oh how I wonder._

                Soft, the cadence of assiduous rapping on the door; the sound of McCracken's voice over the music, invoking her, probing her obstinacy. He had come to check up on her again. They were worried from the last time. They didn't understand. She didn't fully understand it either. 

The pounding increased. Information, in regards to the barren feelings taught and tumbling in her basin of a chest, came tumbling out with the beat tattooed on her door. She thought, of evanescent moments of discomfort and overwhelming despair, of innumerable ills of the mind meeting with the pollution of smoke on her sidewalk emanating from impertinence greater than the latitude of a sea. No one here to comfort me now, Tifa thought. It was all over between us when Sephiroth's heart stopped beating, wasn't it? He never cared, not in the least, about how I'd feel. And they let him slip through their fingers, just as if he was that troublemaking materia thief; the soothing words meant nothing, and none of them stayed very long. All before her eyes now a grayish haze of weariness, jumbled words and conundrum in tones and pitches much too abstruse for the half-asleep, the half-dead. Enthralled in sorrow, she concentrated on her spires instead. The pounding at her portal ceased; the cessation of will was over. Tifa, stubborn streak Tifa, had won. Her heart pounded out a dull rhythm in her chest, with the aches of the riveter's machination. Her red eyes fluttered and fell shut as she pressed her body face down into a highly textured pillow. _Damn it. Damn this world._

_                The scenes still bedazzle our eyes._

_                Are we drifting? Is this our surprise?_

_                What is uplifting, _

_And sifting,_

_                Through the cold of our ways,_

_                And still the voices, _

_The choices,_

_                From those happy days._

_                Where are the faces? _

_The places?_

_Have they all been erased?_

_And still, I wonder…_

Tifa wrenched the tears from her lachrymals dismally, groping the soft cushioning underneath her cheek dependently. She never wished this upon her worst of transgressors, not even Reno. Cloud. The name had little meaning attached to it now. Her life had little bearing, and nothing to fill the void. With a sob that would be socially deprecated, she sought her solvent, gingerly pealing her dissident legs off of the couch and ambling across the room to the crate she had converted tactically into a china closet. Within it lay one of her least prized possessions, a commemorative piece from the final fight. A weapon traded for simply an exotic food menu and a rubber wristwatch. Once again it struck her how unique his sense of humor was.

_La la la la…_

Steel glistened as she grasped the weapon with calloused fingers of a significant length, from which her talent for mixing drinks was derived. How she wouldn't have minded the crucial rum right now, but through the fogginess of her misery, the thought was deferred as she deduced what destiny must have to befall her in an injurious world like this.

_I wonder…_

Had he been more judicious, had he not been so headstrong, it might have been different.

_La la la la la…_

She tearfully gripped the handle, and in one steady motion, raised the weapon far above her head. In the respect of the light entering through her window, the butterfly gleamed, a ponderous slab of metal with a delicately serrated edge.

_Still…_

This is going to be messy, she thought ruefully, grinning at the prospect. Dinner tonight, eh Reno? I guess someone else will come along and unveil your scheming, then. I'm not in it anymore.

_Oh…_

Cloud…

_Will you be the same?_

Ogre

Reno found it a necessity to find an inn, in any case, for bedding if not seclusion for the conduction of further investigation. Doctors mysteriously dying. Now, there wasn't an anomaly since Dr. Ghast and some of the early members of the Turks that shared any basis in concept…He turned past another corner, and found a charmingly restored home with the attributes that marked it as a bed and breakfast, and he went inside, paid for a room, chatted with the peculiar woman behind the counter, and after a lukewarm tea decided to take a stroll. A terrible pain shot through his lower abdomen and he moaned sympathetically, inwardly cursing Tifa. 

Reno's cigar dropped from his mouth in sincere shock as he rounded the corner. Unable to look, yet strangely transfixed, the former Turk merely gaped at the foreboding mural, etched in the orange of coagulating blood, casually spelling out a name…

_Lockheart_…

…Over and over again…

Reno opened the book swiftly, fumbling through the weathered pages until he hit something in shorthand that made him cringe. The book closed by itself in his hands—and not through an act of gravity. He dropped it with a yelp, and it made a perfectly inanimate thud. 

"Oh…" He tried to remember his prayers, to think back to the days when he sat in the pew, his snappish eyes following the candle bearers, placing himself on a plinth above it all, beyond the hoopla that was loving god, berating the nuns and the dour priests and the whole lifeless procession of stellar mass. 

Eventually, he drew his gun instead. The click that registered in his brain, he inferred, was better than the service of angels. After all, angels wanted you with them; they wanted you dead. There was a reason they taught you choir in the church.

"All right, wise ass. Show yourself!" The human things ignored him, and the dirt, peeking through the cement, seemed to leer in anticipation. The words on the wall were still there.

"Shit!" He clamped his eyes shut. _Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh…_Breath grazed his ear, and he whipped around to find nothing. His heart beating furiously, he hit the pavement, knocking his wind out just as he needed to breathe. _Shit! Holy fucking shit! What the hell…!_ His eyes scanned the book; which was as it had been when he dropped it. _Yeah. Right. Reno, you're just overreacting. It's probably the hangover, ya' fucking alcoholic._ He sighed, snatching up the book and stuffing it back into his jacket haughtily, an affront to any supernatural power that might have thought to get the better of him bookless. Yet, his heart was racing, threading faster and faster. His chest burned with built-up acid. Wheezing, Reno scoured his surroundings again, his green eyes detecting nothing but gray walls and brown brick, the usual drab backdrop of this broken-down city. Twisting on one knee, he brought himself to his feet. 

"Hello?" Reno swung an arm exasperatedly, searching the alley with his eyes. His brow furrowed, and his anger only increased with each passing second. "Hello? Hey! Come out you mother! I'm not putting up with this today!" While his mouth was moving, his mind was grasping at trivialities to keep himself calm. How's the weather supposed to be later? How's Tifa—Tifa…why the hell had they, or it, gone through the trouble of scribbling her name up in unidentified blood on an alley wall—an alley that he had a fifty-fifty chance of happening upon at best?

The warm air of someone's breath settled at his ear, paralyzing him.

"Who—who…"

"You haven't much time." A small voice; a woman's voice; whispered; reverberating in his ears. Somehow, it seemed familiar, like the sight of a shell from a long since forgotten day at the beach. 

"I don't know what you're getting at!" He screamed, wringing his fists. _Anger? Yeah. Well, what good is anger against something you can't see? _Shadows crept into the alley. Not ordinary shadows, Reno realized. Ordinary shadows usually didn't strobe with green energy.

"Something is going to happen." Reno glanced back at the wall, realizing the overture in its bloody scrawl.

"To, to Tifah?" There was a pause, and, as much as it chilled him, Reno could have sworn he felt someone nod in confirmation, felt it in a sense as if he had witnessed it. _Oh, damn. I am not going ta like this._

"Go back there, quickly." The breath against his ear faded, and the voice was now inaudible, if it was ever there at all. 

"What the HELL just happened!!!!???" He shrieked to no one.

A few seconds later, two ambling lovers were nearly mowed down by a man running, an insane transient in threadbare clothes, clutching his fiery red hair and mumbling to himself.

Living in Captivity

It takes at best, steel reflexes and the utmost concentration to avert a blade brought against you by your own volition. Dropping the weapon with a disappointed scream, Tifa fell forward, lying in a jumbled heap near the hilt, exuding an artifice of suicide that resembled greatly actual death, discounting the tears that streamed from her eyes. She brought her crossed forearms to her face, sobbing in relentless torment. Minutes droned past, and her situation grew unabatedly worse. _Cloud_…had she been in better spirits, she might have wondered why it was the only damn name she recalled. 

Through her bleariness, she could faintly hear a knock on the door, a knock which clearly would have been a heavy pounding had she not sprawled out on the floor with every wish to die that she could muster up, which consumed most of her attention. 

Outside Reno cursed, using his body as a battering ram against a door much too sturdy for urbanization.

"Hey! Tifah! Don't make me come in there!" The faint thuds at the door grew stronger, and Tifa lifted herself up, tingling all over due to the oxygen deprivation she suffered while wheezing on her side in emotional torment. Within her compass was the door. Unsteadily, she rose to her feet and ambled over to it, vaguely envisioning whoever was standing on the opposite side rushing through the glass at any given moment. Not that it mattered much, she reminded herself, berating softly. One quick stroke and it could all have been out of her ragged mind. 

She turned the knob piteously, and the door swung open as the outsider muscled into the room. He was breathing heavily, his eyes distended with blood vessels, wide with terror. His next response to peering about the room wildly was to look at her dead on, his expression resembling the face of a patient with grave's disease. The flurry of red hair had green eyes. It was Reno.

"Reno." He exhaled heavily, looking at her with utter befuddlement. 

"Um…" Neither could focus on the other, and yet they continued to stare.

"You fucking think?" He eventually screamed, getting his bearings back. Then he thrust his hands in his pockets, trolling up a less than fresh cigar. In a flash, Tifa had avulsed it from his fingers, looking down at it awkwardly, as if she didn't quite remember why she didn't want him smoking within the premises of her domicile. 

"Some clemency, please." There was a low rage in his tone, some obvious concern, but overall he seemed haggard, tenfold as much as he had that morning. For no apparent reason at all, she complied, her consciousness deadened by her recent acts. He took the cigar back uneasily, fetching the lighter from his pocket, glancing about the room. There was a fresh scent of lilac and apple that hung around it, and it struck him odd that Tifa should have mellow, blue floral print curtains, woolly white carpet, and a vibrant yellow, if not shabby, swallowtail butterfly patterned couch. She seemed a much more racy personality. 

"What do you want, Reno?" She asked dully. Despite his subliminal wishes, he was desperate for the brisk fresh air that had been sweeping through all day. Longingly he turned toward the door.

"Well, you know it isn't really best to coop yerself up in stale air like this. Um, c'mon, let's go for a walk."

"But." Her face was puffy from crying. Her pretty eyes were heavily lidded with red. Reno shrugged, grabbing a sticky hand.

"C'mon. You can't want to stay here. I mean, look at this place. It's…lonely. You don't even have a cat." That finalized it, he thought, edging Tifa closer to the door. She shook her head tenaciously.

"I…don't wanna…"

"Will you stop being so ornery?" He shouted, suppressing a sigh. "Let's go. I have a lot to say to you yet, and you are not going ta back down, you hear? It…it's about the book. I think I know what it is." Her eyes narrowed at this position despicably.

"You're looking for a diversion, aren't you?"

"It's Doctor Ghast's journal." He submitted with the same earnestness as before. Her jaw froze, and, as her anger rebuilt, he gave her a pointed look that redounded all his speech up to this point.

"You're…" 

"Of course I'm serious." He scowled, removing the book from the folds of his jacket once again, opening it to the necessary page. There was a glint in his eyes that she had never quite apprehended before, a look of non-fundamental civility that she found quite dangerous. Yes, he could cover the rudimentary functions of day-to-day society, but she had always thought he had done it like a dreg, like a slob; just like the rest of them in the slums. Hell, it would explain why he was ShinRa's errand boy down there in sector seven. But no, she now limpidly saw that her presumptions weren't the case. Reno's eyes flared with something other than the hate and grimness and sloppiness that she was used to seeing. Those malachite green eyes, framed oh so nicely in that smoker's face, were enriched with a rather intelligent, fierce and animal feeling of the world, rather like a mongoose, a fox, or a hawk, or some other unfeelingly cruel predator that did necessary, organized cruelty for its survival.  For the first time in her life, she was truly afraid of him, without any hopes of, like she had done with everyone else, making him a comfortable face to look upon. She despaired, and glanced down at the strangely rustic looking journal, peering into the clearly academic and abstruse notes on cryogen redux and resuscitation, a few names that were all too familiar, and a technique called corpus synthesis. 

"Reno," Her head bowed as his inertly menacing eyes fell on her.

"Do, do you understand any of this?" She wondered, looking at the illogical chapter in what must have been the deceased scientist's scrawl. Her gaze gradually moved from the tobacco stained teeth to the baggy, lassitude-filled eyes. The cold stars that represented the killer's mind dimmed in reluctance, but she needn't prod him.

"…Yes. Corpus Synthesis is the basis of taking Mako energy and sustaining a form, then injecting…materials, if you will." He explained minimally, wiping his greasy forehead with grimy fingers. Collecting sweat, he quickly tugged the digits away, rubbing them fast to rid them of the oil. Her expression meanwhile warped into something of faint comprehension of the topic, and Reno gazed at her patiently, hoping that she'd figure it out.

"Cloning?"

"…No. Genetic engineerin', usually involving dead tissue samples."

"You mean…Jenova regeneration." Reno frowned, finding Tifa's lack of perception somewhat amiss. _So, she did attempt it,_ he thought with consternation. _Jeez Tifa, as much as watching you 'round the clock would tickle my fancy_…he brushed the thoughts aside, shaking his head cynically. 

"Or somethin' akin ta it." 

The Repercussions of Frying Good Gray Cells

"Mommy! Mommy! There isn't any gravity out here! And I'm cold! An' my knees are buckling!" Cid's unexpected cry jarred Red Thirteen and company awake for the fourth time that evening, each member assuming that this unwelcome spasm would not yield consciousness. They were proven incorrect. Cid's eyes bulged as they opened, and he bolted out of the bed, bandaged and heinous, the remainder of his gray hair char black and jutting out of small corners where bandages would never have fit properly on Cid's large, uneven scalp. Arms outstretched, he clutched the nearest person in the vigil—Barret.

"Don't let the space clowns eat me—err—err—what the frick?" He released the leather-bound corners of Barret's jacket apologetically. With his anxiety depleting most of his energy, Cid Highwind, the living victim of his own experiment with an enormous Voltaic pile, relapsed into a supine manner of rest. 

"Que sera, sera." Red mumbled to himself, walking out of the room now that Cid had proven that he wasn't going to be permanently deaf or suffer any other unusual side effect from the electrical shock. Cid's eyes were just beginning to adjust to the dim lighting conditions. He made a faint outline of Shera's glasses and, still a smidgeon delirious, he began reliving his prior moments of frustration with her.

"Shera you bloody freak! Why did you botch it all for me??" He rose again cholerically and slumped back onto the bed, spent, yet not entirely willing to disuse his tongue. 

"You jerk! You retard! You moron! You…" Cid remembered the present, remembered the pain he was currently in, and groped his face, coming into contact with the lining of bandages on his ears and jaw. He considered this pensively, and continued rubbing the effected areas in contemplation.

"Um…what the hell…happened to me?" 

"The rocket crash." It was Shera, her voice oppressively sarcastic. He could vaguely see her depart, and he shook his head languidly, posturing toward Barret. It appeared that he had come to an epiphany while cradling that vulgar head of his.

"Why am I such an asshole?" Barret, not having an immediate answer, shrugged. 

"Well, thanks for &^%*%^# sticking up for me."

Shera quaked with anger in the hall for a moment or two, and finally regained her cordial disposition that she so often tempered herself to have. Cid… Ultimately, her composure was transitory.

"I didn't ruin his goddamn life!" She screamed at no one, and bolted down the hall. Red, looking at her in a conciliatory fashion, and so harshly rebuffed by her fit, decided to follow her anyway and see if he could calm her nerves. At the rate she was moving however, she had already made it to the stairwell, and the only thing stopping her was the security detail (who had, unbeknownst to Red, gone off duty several hours before at the request of their captain), or, at least, their "imposing" youthful leader, Tsun. He was a short, fierce-eyed young man; eyes yellow-red with a sliver of Yuffie's mischievousness in his smile, and tonight he looked languid loitering there, chewing bubble gum (he had yet to pick up some of the sordid habits of the Turks of Midgar, which Red deemed symbolic of this city) his lank young man's hair obscuring his eyes and temples, his effeminacy somewhat akin to Yuffie's, only his face was a little longer and a bit more girlish than Yuffie could hope for in her own features. Given a cursory glance, you might have even thought that it was the tiresome shinobi in a clever disguise, but it was evident then that Tsun was of the same class among the ethnicity.

"Lady, lady! I can't have you going out that door." He had a pleasantly alto voice that rumbled around the edges, rather unlike Yuffie's mezzo squeal. 

"Why not!" Shera shouted; her fists clamped at her sides. No one had ever witnessed Shera in a tirade before, although it was well earned to say the least. Years of abuse from Cid had, veraciously, brought her to her wit's end. 

"Because you'll be in contention with the authorities," Tsun supplied darkly, obstructing her passage. Correction, Red thought in reference to the boy, you are a psuedo-authoritative child. Tsun had this lionized impassivity to him when interacting in a group, but it was a guise. Anxiety inhered from his occupation, when confronted all by himself, kept him furtively clutching his hair while speaking, proving to be very little effective in the area of convincement.

"Well, if you do not remove yourself from this door there will be less for you to worry about." Her composition boiled with rage, and Tsun, apparently a fairly decent judge of mood if nothing else, decided to allow her past. A tie, Tsun's red tie to be specific, came up with great force, hitting his face sharply, and he flinched. By the time he turned to thwart her, Shera was gone, and Tsun was left standing in a vacant hall, the tips of his longish hair wedged in the corners of his mouth, his lip trembling as if he were about to cry.

"I'm just doing my job." He mumbled in protest. If he hadn't been so childish, Nanaki would have certainly pitied him. 

Mako Nexus

                Nanaki simply passed the adolescent Turk by keeping low, pondering the presence, not to mention the use for such incompetent personnel. Well, maybe he's having a bad night, he mitigated, gamboling down the steps with his wide feet carefully placed before him. His breath mingling with the night's chill air, he made his way down with trepidation. Shera…could he even talk to her? He tried to imagine a conversation in her current hysteria, but was drawing up blanks. Given the circumstances of his life, planning conversation for Nanaki had always been easy, it was giving advice that often proved difficult. If nothing else, he could always offer to bite Cid in jest…with a resounding clang Nanaki bounded down off of the last array of aluminum steps, and looked around. There was a single, heavy, metallic door to his left, but that was closed. Drat. He swished his tail dramatically and took hold of the knob with his teeth.

                "What are you doing?" It was the alto voice of Tsun again, although this time more authoritative, or possibly more fearful of his derelict. Red paused, frowning at the taste of metal on his tongue. His red muzzle crinkled, and he swiveled his eye around to meet Tsun.

                "Im openink the dour with ma teef." Red explained; trying to appear dignified. From the stairwell Tsun sighed, and Nanaki heard the slight, glittery noise of jingling keys, which was followed by the creaking of metal stairs.

                "Did you honestly believe that I didn't hear you?" Tsun wondered, fidgeting to find the material key. A sweep of black hair masked his red-gold eyes. Nanaki sat squarely on his haunches, somewhat embarrassed, and said nothing, preferring the simpler option of being sheepish. Tsun gave a shrug, inserted the key, twisted it, and tugged on the knob, a helpful smile pervading his lips. For a second, the door hung open, and Red didn't understand how.

                "Why are you doing this?" He asked; his ears bent low in worried gratitude. Tsun smiled easily, flipping back his hair.

                "If so inquisitive, I guess I can discrete the disclosure of the more empirical nature of my actions; I'm being generous, and I sympathize with your friend's frustration. D'you think it's easy being a member of the elite city police? No. We're a cadre; a macabre sort of cult, what is usually flaunted as a brotherhood. There is a great deal of pressure on me, you know. I'm young. They deem me intelligent enough, and they want me to help run the city when I'm older. I'm only seventeen. Besides," He added with a shadow of a grin. "You're to be watched under my supervisor's orders. I can't just let your friend meander all over the place in that kind of predicament…all of those emotions rising to the top after so many repressed years…" He stood back, a hand out signaling for Red to make haste. Red bowed, ingratiated, and ambled through, seeing nothing but the white walls of an empty research wing, devoid of any specter of human scent. 

                "Shera came down this way…?"

                "Probably." Tsun agitated, "Well, I guess. You were trying to open this door with your teeth."

                "Yes, but it's quite—impossibly immaculate. This corridor has been unused." He returned his gaze to Tsun, who shrugged mysteriously.

                "I don't know. I just hold the keys." Tsun's hand secretly went into his coat pocket, and Red watched him with suspicion. The boy lazily pulled out a small, trapezoidal device, covered in a thick plastic. 

                "What's that?" Red queried. Tsun eyed the device, and then looked to Red again with candid disbelief.

                "This is a communicator, my paranoid one. It runs on mako and I'm going to contact my boss. He'll send someone out to find your friend."

                "You know, she is probably going to lash out at you if they bring her back intact." Red iterated. Tsun shrugged with blasé.

                "I'm just doing my job." He replied lazily, suppressing a sigh. "But, if that is your prediction, I will call my insurance company and have them boost my coverage." He flipped a switch on the device in his hands, and it chirped. The chirping grew into intervals of chirping, and Tsun's expression twisted in perplexity.

                "Um…okay. That's just weird." 

                "What is it?" Red muzzle scrunched anxiously. Tsun sighed, slumping against the wall, tampering with the device. The chirping turned to chirruping within seconds.

                "The signal's roaming." 

                "Well, why is it doing that?" Tsun shrugged, mindful of the very little he was doing to allay Nanaki's fears.

                "My, there's an informed opinion." The Turk wannabe shot Red a viper's look, which Nanaki exchanged for a wry stare. Tsun Fei Den, officer with the Midgar security division, softened his expression.

                "All right, so I'm not a genius when it comes to these things. To be honest with you they're probably storing mako in here, and its own emission is interfering with the signal. Come to mention it…" He hit the door with his fist and it scraped across the surface, held there by Tsun's abasement. The door was rough, with a texture somewhere between chalk and aluminum alloy. Making a face, Tsun caressed his injured hand. 

                "Lead." Nanaki observed.

                "Yes. I hope your friend,"

"Shera." Red 13 supplied, his tail swinging back and forth worriedly. Tsun's strange eyes glinted. 

"Yes. Well I hope, anyway, that she isn't in there." With this, he gestured toward his body.

"Because I _don't_ want any deformities. I mean, well, you can call on whatever patron god of the sea you like, but since I prefer Leviathan, let me just inform you that I'd like all of _my_ 2000 parts to stay _intact_. Come on, I'll check the upper level. You can stay here if you like, and see if she comes a-knocking. I very much doubt it, however." Tsun departed ascending the staircase, and Red Thirteen, though he wouldn't have admitted it, took a second glance at the door and shuddered. 

He resigned himself to following the pubescent Turk.

On the Roof: Man's fellow Worm

Shera glanced up at the night's sky, letting the cool wind whip her face. Her whole damn life…what a disappointment; a lifelong paroxysm; of grief. Cid's expedition into space was all that her youth wanted to be a part of, and when she had her doctorate, and was respected enough in Shinra; she left Midgar to work with him. Of course, nothing ever came to fruition; her dreams, which might have incinerated her had it not been for that moronic Cid, were deferred by his conscience, and her life squandered on poor judgment since. Staying with Cid, slaving over the rocket with him, finally repairing it, using the rocket, proving herself right after so many years—she sometimes wondered why she didn't just retire from the hell that was Cid Highwind after that. But after Meteor, no questions asked, she just showed up one day aboard the Highwind, lugging a suitcase over cloyed with books and papers and her clothes and toiletries, and moved into the cabin farthest from Cid, which, incidentally, had been next to where Mrs. Gainsborough had taken up, no longer interested in residing in disheveled Midgar now that Aeris was gone. Cid didn't protest, only yelled at Shera to do repairs, which he usually went over with a scolding eye for missed detail. She had a somewhat merry existence with her other shipmates, which later included Barret and Marlene, and somehow this compensated for so many hours of unbelievable, sometimes downright vindictive chastisement. In eight months, she realized that she needed restitution for twenty-nine years. Somehow finding that the situation with the rocket had never been fully resolved in Shera's mind made her welter with uncontrollable anathema for him, for everything. She sighed, rubbing her forehead with thumb and forefinger, and removed her glasses. She scratched a rather painful depression near her eye dismally and inhaled the night's icy breath, condensation courting her respiration. Its product whorled before her face; it was a mist that as a child she fancied for its certain kind of magic.  That magic was of course a work of chemistry, something that she would later devote the remainder of her independent life to. Her body heaved, and she buried her face in her hands and for the first time in many a year, cried.

"Why can't we be reconciled? Why can't I go on to have a normal life? I mean; I'm forty-seven years old! I can't marry; I can't find work! What good is my life here?" Shera cupped her face in her hands, draining off the tears that Cid would have labeled "half-ass". A half-ass sniffle… God; Shera thought. Why do I put up with this idiot?

"Hey! Shera! Didn't I tell you to stay downstairs?" Speaking of idiots, Shera thought, turning to the black haired kid with the unusual eyes, eyes that looked something like blood mixed with mustard, or a bloody egg: something to do with blood at least. Tsun was standing there, his left hand in his back pocket, his right toying with the tie around his neck. She regarded his face, quite effervescent, quite feminine, but not markedly so. It was a face in shape and features rather like that other androgynous kid she knew—Yuffie. Tsun's lips were molded into an approachable grin, and the twilight dark of his pupils glimmered as if sprinkled with faerie dust. 

"Are we introduced?" Shera asked coolly, her glasses positioned haughtily on her beak of a nose.

"Indirectly." The ersatz male Tsun bowed his head forward in deference and then craned his neck upward, blinking at the stars. He wasn't necessarily a focused protector of the quasi-rights of the people, she discerned. Perhaps this whimsy grew out of discontentment, or his obvious limited age experience in the wide world and its pot of echelons—the urbanity. 

"So few real constellations this time of year." He observed, shaking his head weightily. "I've always hated how our planet finds the loneliest patches to travel through." Shera's green eyes lit up in startled curiosity. Did this mere child in a uniform understand her, or was it misconception on her part?

"What are you implying?" She asked; her arms crossed tightly over her bosom. Tsun slipped in a look of mischief, and met with only the effable shield of coldness this woman kept around her, and his spirits plummeted. Her eyes had returned to the stars a little theatrically, and it didn't help that she had tossed her head like an aristocrat of bygone years, centuries. Tsun shivered and rubbed his hands, wishing that he had brought his uniform gloves with him. Though they were uncomfortable, they did seem to fair better against the elements than his skinny palms alone. 

"Why, that you shouldn't be up here, especially alone. It speaks volumes, if you understand my drift." Shera, who had been investing her time in studying the cement beneath her heels, looked up. Unannounced was the mischief on his face—she did not know him to understand the physiognomy embedded there in eyes so alien. Naively she shifted, wrapping her tendril-like fingers in her lab coat, securing herself against the wind and the harsher conditions that she managed to live under. 

"…You can stay if you want." Shera supplied, bowing her head shyly. Tsun smirked, unaware that he was keeping her incurrent temper at bay up until this unfortunate point. 

"You shouldn't be up here in the first place." Tsun offered her a good-natured hand, not seeing the injuries he had inflicted upon her. Shera, with her eyes narrowed in contempt for the perpetrating body, refused it.

"No really," he chuckled, giving her his hand again. Shera turned from him, her face scrunched in temerity, sulking.

"I'm not moving, all right?" She replied after a fashion of time had transpired. You've wounded my ego, summated my hopes and punctured their swollen carcasses with a long needle. Go away. You are exactly like the one I crave solace from. 

"You can't be serious," Tsun remarked without looking at the woman's candid face. Met with silence from the other party, he glanced down, immediately swallowed by her sullen, baleful eyes. 

"Miss," He genially began to apologize, "I didn't know that you were…"

"Damn right I'm serious." Shera hissed, curling up into a fetal position. Tsun gulped, knowing that, even in this state, her reluctance wouldn't do with his employer, a tall, wide, and stalwart man of few words with a shaven head; a man who wore sunglasses in the darkness.

Crawling along the Belly

The sound of shattering bones filled the staircase, causing Red's ears to twitch with solicitude. For whom, he wasn't exactly sure, but whoever had taken that last fall his heart, nevertheless, went out to. Someone, definitively male, released a sudden yowl and grunted. It was Tsun, no doubt, probably endangered by Shera's fast escaping bottled up years of anguish and misdirected energy. Anxious to see both safe, Red bolted up the remaining stairs to the top of the next staircase, hoping that he didn't find them both in bits and pieces—he didn't know how either Cid or the police would react to their imperfect demise. As he was padding across the floor, the shrieking penumbra of the upper floor and a series of garbled words resumed after a considerable amount of effort was made by one miserable party to ascend the upper staircase for a second duel. 

"Look! Lady! I don't know what your ruminations were before I interrupted them, but I can clearly see you're a psychopath. If you don't mind, I'm going to leave now, call the officials."

"Do what you bloody will you girly little cretin!" Shera obviously was giving him the beating of his life as he erstwhile tried to vindicate himself as a person under the wrong pretense, attacked and belittled for uncommitted crimes. Red shuffled his muscles and quickened his pace, scaling the steps four at a time. Whatever it was transpiring up ahead, it didn't sound conducive to the health of either the wrathful or the victim.

Red 13 scrambled up the last step in time to witness an unusual tableau; Shera, arms rapping fiercely across Tsun, trying to pummel him to death. The panicking, ogled Turk nearly over the rail and several stories above the pavement had not seen him, but was contorting out of her range.

Tsun subjected himself to what seemed like a backbreaking turn in a vain attempt to avulse the weeping Shera from his torso. She only pounded with greater force, a tear rolling down her cold, ashen face.

"You're all the same!" Tsun coughed in disbelief and happened, adventitiously, to glance up in Red's direction. There was an element of surprise in his curry colored eyes. 

"Do something." Tsun whispered tensely. "She's beaten me half to death, and now I can't get away from her." He attempted again to twist away from her clutches in vain, and a drop of sweat clung to his tear moistened hair, commingling with the blood that dribbled from an open head wound.

"Please." Tsun rasped, edging away from Shera, who was beating his kneecap with a fist as she bewailed her life through sobs, and begged him not to quit the vigil he had stumbled into. 

Red Thirteen, Nanaki to his compatriots, suddenly confirmed that a full moon must have been in the heavens that night, for he did something disastrously uncommon for him. The broad shouldered, stately feline crashed to his haunches and sat, not twitching a hair. 

…He had not been particularly fond of Tsun.

In Transit

"Just tell me again; why are we doing this?" The voice was low, soft, hushed by the simple nature of its thoroughly crushed spirit. Vincent Valentine was seated on a train—his bane and amusement Yuffie was across from him, practicing acrobatics on a few adventitious poles. The train had tacky blue upholstery, he noticed, trying his best to avoid looking at her. They were the only two people in the car. Well, one zealously heterodox ninja and one…Jenova specimen. Technically, there really weren't two people there—just two freaks where two people ordinarily would have been had it not been for the untimely presence of the freaks.

"I don't know; it seemed worthwhile." She sang flippantly, catching the steel with a gloved hand and setting up for another giddy swing. 

"Wheee!" 

"Betraying me like this…you can sometimes be such a perfidious migrant—I really think that you're seeking some kind of ultimate perdition."

"And why not?" The bus had been in transit for nearly an hour, and, not surprisingly, all of the other passengers had long since sought haven amid other cars. Yuffie, taking advantage of their absence, had increased her gymnastic use of the poles occupying what she could liberally term her car, partly for the amusement of it, and partly to annoy the penultimate being along with her within the relentlessly moving confines. 

Peering licentiously in his direction, she threw her feet out and flung herself through the air, performing a roundhouse before crouching and cart wheeling backwards about two meters to the door. Vincent, though apprehension had transformed the expression on his face, was either too prudent or stale to offer much in way of rebuke at this moment in time. …_So when did I become her governess?_ He pondered his transcendence crossly and Yuffie performed an axle and leapt onto a pole, from which she decided to hang by her legs like a monkey. 

Vincent sighed heavily, but he hadn't thought that Yuffie heard him.

"Quit that," She snapped, folding her arms across her inverted chest. Out of an uncommon practice, she was wearing her hair down, and her small but sleek body was covered with a white linen blouse, suede hiking boots, and a pair of slacks with an exquisite black jacket slung haphazardly around her shoulders. For Yuffie, the outfit consisted of her most formal wear in a lifetime. It was, by Yuffie, supposed to frame the statuary modicum of dress elicited by the assemblage of the Neo-Midgarian elite. She had pillaged it at the station before her escort had come upon her greedily un-zippering luggage bagatelle—she had protested against returning it on the grounds that its case was no longer there. 

Silence prevailed; the remarks were completely negative, absolutely nugatory. Yuffie swallowed, and raised her head, beholding him. She was beginning to note how he had a way of compounding awkwardness with his presentiment.

"Aren't you too well-dressed to be acting like jackanapes?" Vincent had raised one of his sharp eyebrows at her. 

"I think you would mean a single ape, had I not been acting like a whole troupe." She parried, and grinned like a Cheshire cat. Vincent sighed again. This wasn't wonderland so much as an agony of eight fits. 

"C'mon Vin, stop acting like a stiff." Yuffie pouted, her fingers slipping down the pole in some vain attempt to touch the floor. Frustrated that they couldn't attain their goal, they scrabbled for it, and her legs came undone. Falling with a shriek, she clamped her eyes shut just as her face approached the ground. Abruptly, she found herself suspended there like a pendant. 

"Oh?" Spitting out her lank hair and glancing past it she saw Vincent, fist cinched around her ankle, his mouth tightened into a frown. In blind, mindless glee, she giggled, brushing her hands against her reddening face.

"Swing me!" Yuffie made a gyrating motion with her index fingers. She had been released; left to sag to the floor and succumb to hysterics. Vincent resumed his former seating position sullenly, his eyes fixed on the ever-changing scenery out the window, the diversity of light and color moving before him at a raging speed. His jagged, inhuman teeth were clenched, and his hair strolled down his face as he bowed it away from her. Yuffie glanced up through her spell of laughter, and beheld how white his knuckles were. _Not again…_Swallowing harshly, she brought herself to a seating position on the floor.

"Are you contemptuous of me?" She wondered, acutely worried. With a light, self-deprecating smirk Vincent turned his face, composed to quell the ravaged look of his eyes, toward her. His directionless hand curled over the pliant seat cushion as he sat forward. For a moment only the racket of the train coursing over the railroad could be heard.

The would-be aged Turk sighed, heavily and hopelessly, breaking the contiguous doldrums of the quietude for a second. Uniform silence pervaded the room, and each took a more detailed glimpse of the other. Yuffie sipped in the rough, grief burdened contours of his face, and the little marks of age that were shouldering the weariness of his former life in a manner that would have committed Faust to shame. His red eyes, so fluid and bottomless, were ethereal and hieratical, but possessive of the danger that made the eyes of great cats so alluring. A wave of furor had swept over him, heightening the intensity of those eyes tenfold. The black hair that he had tucked back into a messy ponytail was a mane that would have complimented the greatest of lions, or honored the best of princes. His height and gawkiness had betrayed the beauty of his face a little, though it had done so in a charming, insecure, almost geeky way. The mysterious, alternately soulful and broken man's fine, high cheekbones were opal, and his eyelids a light cream, contoured by marvelously angled eyebrows and resting behind a nose of a very regal charm that bestowed a little bit of an aquiline presence to his face. The eyes, red and aglow, had an exquisite array of lashes, and his lips were thin and drawn taut in a humorless expression of adroit intelligence. It was a beauty and grace of form largely dismissed by the elsewhere, sidetracked pensive mind of its master. She began to ponder his ethnicity, now that she could see the features more clearly. He usually had his hair down in his eyes, masking the outlines of his cheekbones. Even then the girl believed that he truly did have unparalleled features, and, sure of it now, wondered from whence his fortune came. Her form as it existed she always perceived to be a little scraggly, a little haphazard—the villagers were sure her looks were inherited primarily from one parent—her father—and had a bitter habit of mentioning it to her when she was in an elevated state of self-congratulation. 

Vincent decided against his distressingly opposed libido that there was something not quite right about her. Furthermore her expression, in spite of his anger with her callowness, was well worth some speculation. Her mouth was set and still, and over it, her highborn brows were furrowed, and her neck was craned outward, her expression lacking any direct avenue but also lacking subtlety. Anyone who might have stumbled upon her might have gazed in curiosity at the sight, but comprehended it little. Finally, Vincent was compelled to ask what she was thinking about.

"You. Where are you from?" She wondered, cocking her head further to the left.

                "You're not Wutainese, and you definitely don't look Midgarian. You're not Gunjin, are you? Because I heard those people died out during the war of fifty-two years ago, and the last of them were really OLD." 

                "Pray you ask a more relevant question." He entreated, folding his hand over his face. The thought of the Gunjin was, to say the least, a little disconcerting for anyone along the coast who had survived the magi's wrath. They were a religious cult determined to restore magic to its fullest capacity by taking the lives of those who allegedly strayed from the path. Vincent gazed out the window simmering, and his cheeks flushed a dull rose. The momentum was supposed to make Yuffie sick, he remembered as he watched their little car coast away from a beautiful green meadow. A malediction upon this, he added to his thoughts sinisterly.

                "You really hate train rides." She observed moodily, swinging a leg out and resting her weight on it. The astoundingly black pants leg kept unfortunately attracting his eye however, and he closed both eyes, omitting the sight of her taper body, sinewy and athletic with a masculine quality, but still pretty, graced with bold, clever and thin brown eyes, a festoon of dark hair and an attractive if round face. _She's a profane skeleton in women's attire that she selected and illegally carted away with. There is nothing feminine about a reedy, china paste white kid with a grin that could swallow a watermelon._

                "Only this one." He attested tersely, huddling against the window despite the draft, evading her questioning face. Yuffie, though she looked quizzical for a few seconds, shrugged and swung to her feet, then crossed her legs and sat down on the floor again. The old floorboards creaked, and for a moment Vincent feared it would give in. Never again should it have to be worn out this way; he regretted even making this feeble exodus, if all Yuffie would do was make noise and move in an unintentionally provocative way. 

                "The Gunjin were a caste of magicians living on the outskirts of Wutai. They had an island. There were knights on Kanashimi, but they have long since vanished." Yuffie stated matter-of-factly, raising her index finger toward the ceiling.

                "A rather imprecise history of the Gunjin." Vincent stated casually, relaxing his posture a little. Yuffie smiled toothily from ear to ear and cowed her sprightly malice where it formed, although she would have happily unleashed it. Vincent's eyebrows again raised in puzzlement.

                "Why are you grinning in that overly joyous fashion of a child that begets joy from murder?" He quizzed. Yuffie, settling on her mischief, made a pathetic frown and placed her sleeve to her face, hand pointed downward, striking a piteous posture. She pretended to sniffle, and was, on some level, convincing, despite the nasal tone she took for her lament.

                "Now you have slaked your hard heart's knifelike edge with the sweetness of my heart's blood. My sleeve is the Junon Sea because you, like the lurking barracuda, have swallowed the bright glimmering fish that was my soul." Bringing the black cloth away from her scrunched and reddened face, her pout soon broke into a hiccupped laugh, and her sunburn colored cheeks turned plum from laughter-induced oxygen deprivation. As Vincent thought about it the more, he found it inexplicable, random, and namely (his favorite predicate adjective) _stupid_. His sinuses throbbed, and his knees buckled. _She was unquestionably, grotesquely cute._

                "Flying Away With Goi, the one-act historical-love tale. I saw it performed when I was eight. That line's what the heroine kept saying whenever her lover left her. It was really funny an' it wasn't supposed to be. All the actors were boys, an' they talked like that! And to think we once put on swell plays when it was our own; seems impossible, with all of this Junon-influenced stuff." Vincent had slumped back against the seat, his expression unchanged, his red eyes staring out the window opposite of him. The grass and concrete rails were a blur. Occasionally, a tree swept past. _Her lover? Ye gods…The Wutain people have one-act plays like that, where everyone is male? Are they just men, or are they men pretending to be women or women pretending to be men? Or both?_

"I need my head examined." He muttered.

END OF CHAPTER ONE Chapter Two: Imbroglio 

"True prophets did not, as Montanus did, deliberately induce a kind of ecstatic intensity and a state of passivity and then maintain that the words they spoke were in the voice of the spirit." Montanism: Encyclopedia Brittanica

"Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch—as distinct too, yet as intimately blended."—"Berenice"

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."—Macbeth, Act Four, Scene One

                Well, at least you can see what I'm reduced to atomically, lest this is all ill behavior, and if then you would have quit before this enlightening little passage. Continue, if you will, but don't, in any retrospection, feel that you were not warned with the utmost propriety. In any case, if you go on, go on…I want feedback, as this hobby might turn into something of a career.

Ack! Daft, bald, tawdry tale, much as it is, it has a tendency to become ontologically unsound, if at all possible!

Remnants

It had been about eight months. It was amazing how quickly eight months could surrender to time, and then, the rest of one's life could crawl at a snail's pace until the end. By the end, all of it would seem a blur, something that never really happened in a large enough quantity.

A man, perhaps, could feel this way lying at the bottom of a chilly expanse, a basin of untold depth from the bottom, a man that had blotted out the sun overhead with a single plunge and a spray of bubbles. 

Barret watched uneasily as they wheeled Shera into the room on a white, linen covered gurney, her body strapped down almost mercilessly to the bed parts by leather straps and buckles, giving the stretcher the appearance of a torture device. In comparison to her earlier mental disorder, she seemed hardly the same woman; her thick titian hair was down, partly obscuring her face, and her arms, thin and pallid as they were, were crossed placidly against the gentle rising and falling of her breast. The walls were a cold gray, immaculate, giving off the same presence that the interior of a crypt does when the living is admitted inside to inspect the conditions of the abode for their remains. The prodigious man shuddered, imagining the sensation of waking up in such a room after so startling an experience. The task force had been called in, guns had been pressed against her scalp, rough, flat hands against her shoulders and chest, and, kicking and screaming, she was placed upon the stretcher, restrained, and injected with a needle. 

"Well, at least she has time to regain her senses," Tsun remarked stonily from his seat by the door. His longish bangs were in the worst disarray, and his youthful face appeared to have aged a striking decade in the intensely white illumination of the artificial light. Not that Barret could really blame the boy, who had fallen over the railing as they pried her loose, grabbing fortuitously onto a cement ledge and only terrifying himself into shock. Still…he directed his gaze to the screen that separated the isolation room from their crowded ant tunnel of a hallway, looking at the stray locks that had brushed against cold and discolored flesh, and the visage of a woman menaced simply for living. She wasn't a permanent danger to anyone; she just lost control, and rightfully so, after someone held her under his boot for so many years. Her recriminations were misapplied to a decent extent, but they still counted as proof of psychological torment, not irreversible breakdown. Someone, he concluded, needed to speak with her when she woke up, to help her ventilate. 

"I've been hangin' around that goody two-shoes Red for too long," he mumbled so that the words he issued were inaudible. Red Thirteen had closed his eye and nestled against the wall, yet was coaxed into alertness again by the whispering, and now watched with deep, unfettered consternation as they closed the cell doors. His crimson eye shone remorsefully, and he bowed his head with apology.

"It oppresses my soul to see her like this," Red announced with a dramatic flick of his ears, closing his eyes as if he were remonstrating with a higher being than himself to intervene on her behalf. 

Shera, Barret evaluated her personal attributes in his mind. An older woman, a friend of Mrs. Gainsborough and Cid's undying lackey; a bit of a quiet thing, not one to meddle in the personal affairs of others. Kind of like himself. Like Dyne. Like everyone he knew from the beginning, everyone who was now demised. People broke themselves in for ShinRa, true, but Barret was beginning to notice a character flaw in all of humanity; many reasons could lead to the effect of the broken spirit. Constrained by the pressures of civilization's need to provide roles for everyone, Shera, determined and willful, had felt it all her life in the presence of Cid.

"How long're they gonna sedate her like that?" Barret asked in worry accustomed to a little boy or a patient lover. Real men, he was told, never behaved like this, but after all he had been through, and his surrogate fatherhood, these principles had begun to experience a softening in the whole of his character, which had been preternaturally founded more in paternal gentleness than anything. His personality had undergone some altering when Cloud vanished from all range of communication; his cynical side still had enough authenticity left to dominate the sentiment toward the young man who had been attacked by the prone figure on the gurney. Something of him was lying there too, and he couldn't quit from the sensation that they were helpless in the hands of strangers—all of them, not just the unconscious body of Shera. He could have, wanted to kick himself in the shins for it; this just wasn't the authoritative calculation of a resistance leader. This was the soft-bodied, weak-minded complaint of lesser people. 

_How can you be happy as a rundown species such as this?_

_It's too late to turn you; it's too late to turn_

_All that energy to feel safe at night but inside you burn_

_Does that chemistry still linger there or are you being remiss?_

"Turn that damn radio the f'off!" Barret shouted at the loud speaker several feet above their heads. It was futile, however, and the speaker kept playing its polemic ballad of some inner heart's rage. He could kick himself for even being present at this little rally; the rabble of AVALANCHE wasn't back together. Its key idiot had been missing for months. Others had not returned. Too many were missing; most were likely dead. Barret was one of a few who were really still accounted for, and, called together for a possible worst, it didn't seem possible for these torn seams of the fabric known as AVALANCHE to bear the wear again. 

_Won by a landslide, saved by the bell,_

_Metaphorical rubbish for the knell,_

_Can't get the nettles out of your skin can you?_

_You pluck and prick 'till your skin turns blue_

_Desolate, you grope for a reprieve…_

The words cut off sharply and the room exploded with the sound of three carefully aimed gunshots and the crackle of the demolished radio. Staring out acrimoniously from behind his gun, Barret smirked, and an armed militia poured into the room.

"Sir!" One of the pathetic curs in blue uniform shouted, his eyes bulging in dismay. Easing back into his chair with classical blasé, Barret lowered his gun arm.

"Cin't do nothin' to me 'bout that radio boys. It was breakin' my concentration." The former resistance leader uttered, scratching a thick black eyebrow. Had his manner of dress changed any since Meteor, he may have seemed a little less plausible under the circumstances. Intimidation is a strange magic, however, and so the soldiers remained silent.

"Breaking your…and so you just haul off and shoot it?" Tsun asked incredulously from his corner. His hands were shaking and dripping with brown; he had spilled his java on them in the upheaval. 

"Pipe down, brat." Barret snapped, lifting his index finger to his fatigue-clad knee. The last thing he had wanted was to be here to witness the mental collapse of one of his shipmates, least of all encounter this highly disagreeable whelp Tsun. He had a personality that was hard to ignore, that same air of professional, white-collared, murderous authority that every Shinra he had ever met possessed, especially prevalent in snot-nosed Reeve, the Scarlet bitch, and…he had to frame his mind around the words that had arisen, the name was not a toy, after all, but the epitome of cautionary horror tales…

Vincent. There, his brain might have breathed. Now that's better.

How he HATED Reeve and those others; manipulative bastards they were. Particularly Reeve, who toyed around with that little doll when they needed him the least, and jacked off when they needed him the most. Weighing the pros and cons of it, he couldn't help but use his personal calculus of usefulness to bar any positive reflections on Reeve. The monster saved them at the Temple of the Ancients. Big deal. He was a sick man with a dumb robot, and he subjected his daughter and Elmyra to kidnapping. Elmyra, of all people, didn't have to suffer such ill treatment after all she was forced to go through with her daughter; and she and Marlene were entirely innocent of the malfeasance of their kin. Reeve was a damn traitor and a liar, and, while he may not be under any pressure at this time, he still was in no position to penalize Barret if he settled the score. _Jes' wait 'till I get my mitts on you, lil' punk,_ Barret seethed. By this time Tsun had begun in a strained little voice to bemoan the three maniacs he had unfortunately acquainted with that night, recusing himself of their supposedly abnormal behavior. _But isn't that what heroes are for?_ Barret thought in the back of his mind. _To be a little something stranger than human?_ The average human felt too much, feared too much; you really needed a wacko to successfully abolish evil. 

Tsun kept chattering, and Red Thirteen joined in the muddle of conjecturing and futile responses. Barret drummed his index finger on his knee, and kept to himself, humming loudly as the guards tried to determine what to do with their soldering radio. 

"I have a friend named Cid who wouldn't mind payin' you back." Barret stated, producing a wide grin. _Remnants,_ he thought, his scowling grin growing deeper. _That's all we are, 's remnants. And misuse is stretching us out, unraveling the last drab pieces of us._

"…And I thought my employer, Rude, was a little creepy. Man. I see now why he likes telling stories about you guys." Barret's head shot up, and tilted in the direction of the voice that emitted the name. Regardless, Tsun swallowed, his eyes wide enough so that the black of his pupils shone in the light like cormorant feathers. 

"_Mmm_…oh, oh, _mmm_…"

"Quit that suppuratin', ya damned brat, an' repeat what you jest said." Tsun's compliance, while unnecessary since the guards still supervised them, the youthful Turk felt rather obliged to give. Ignoring the imposing gun arm that the man donned he peered into his glinting black eyes, which was even worse. _Like burning black oils…_ He could see two gun barrels reciprocating.

"Rude. He was an underling for the city of Midgar, you know. Makes hand gestures a lot, but is a very…subdued man."

"It's kind of creepy if you ask me—I really don't have a better way to describe it," Tsun added, folding his arms over his chest, and anxiously gnawing on his bottom lip, his eyes wide with unreadable emotion—fear, if you followed the body language. Turks however were simply undaunted by these things, in Barret's humble opinion. The boy vacillated between unrest and humungous waves of cold terror that made his disposition unfavorably stolid, and all the while his eyes were open. Sneering in contempt, Barret turned his head aside, a faraway look misting over his eyes. Nanaki had turned his face fully to Tsun, apparently interested in this revelation.

"Could you—ah, contact your superior for me?" He intoned sweetly. The Turk nodded, another wave of fear choking him.

"Yes, but he and ah, his assistant, are nevertheless—extremely busy." Tsun cautioned, and closed his eyes pleadingly as Barret's massive form came upon him fully, his bronze-like musculature protruding from his flesh, his eyes giving him the looks of a berserker. _Of all the days that Tsun Fei Den had picked to be Tsun_, the young Turk narrated for himself. _Today was certainly the one he should have bypassed. Stupid, immature, anal-retentive, slip-of-the-tongue Tsun. We've handpicked him a lucky number for his toe tag. Yesiree._

"I-I can take youtohim…if you want."

"Fine by me." Barret replied.

Nuances and Norms

The train had reached a halt an six hours later, passports were checked, papers were signed, and, among fifty three residents of the numerous cities of all the nations, two were there who, accented in several yards of cold, gothic black, could have been called forth to represent the utter destruction that had befallen the city of Midgar. 

"Forged documents, eh?"

"You didn't think that was clever of me?"

"Simply put, no." Yuffie Kisaragi and her escort, titled on his passport as an active member of the now extremely disorganized and hard to keep track of Midgarian Turks, were in a train terminal southwest of the Wutaian embassy and four blocks west of a ritzy hotel franchise built of concrete and several stories high. Neon pink lighting from its rooftop stylized in a northern script was reflecting off of the glass ceiling of the terminal, although the series of street lamps that decorated the walks were casting their own reflections above in other parts of the industrial railway station. Yuffie was running along to catch up with Vincent's long-legged stride, and the Turk emeritus, noticing, had decided to slow down and walk apace with her, as cramping as that would become. Yuffie paused and wheezed, her face flush with pink and vinegar—he esteemed that she might have been annoyed, and already was going to apologize when a tinge of anger kindled in her eyes.

"Don't even say it." She ordered, swiping at two dark strands of hair that had settled on her brow. 

"Say it, and I'll murder you, an' stuff your extra parts underneath the floorboards." Yuffie waved a shuriken for emphasis, and, to her astonishment, chuckled mildly when he refused to respond. A blush had crept into her neck; she felt it, and was grateful for the collar around her blouse. 

_She's tired,_ Vincent thought warily. _And so am I._ For a transient amount of time, his eyes glowed red, sparked by a sudden dread in bedding arrangements. He turned his gaze fully onto the ninja, attempting to be stern. She depleted that in a smile, and he realized with growing terror that his resolution had as much of a chance against melting upon sight of her as an ice cube does in the inferno. _Curses. People don't exude this kind of…sickeningly magnetic cuteness, do they? Why, why was I handpicked for this disaster? _

He blinked back the memories of dressing in the same room with her, earlier that day. It had taken all the reserve he had to pretend like she didn't exist, and midway into buttoning his dress shirt, he retreated post haste to the bloody walls of the bathroom to remove the blush, like a canker sore, that had irritatingly spread across his face. She had, at the time, removed her blouse, or, as he referred to the bare capacity of it to hold what little cleavage she had—the low-cut, teenage perquisite _thingie_. He was recognizing similar patterns as far as attire went in the clothing of other girls Yuffie's age. She was competing, minus the inflated top size. It declared itself as a case of retribution, or overcompensation—something a propos to that.

"Hey…hey…" Vincent was jerked out of his reverie by a sharp jabbing of his sleeve. He looked down, nonchalantly, into the rather testily narrowed gray eyes belonging to none other than Yuffie Kisaragi. 

"What's distracting you now?" She glowered, and Vincent paled nervously. _Remain calm, and she probably won't notice,_ he reasoned. Drawing himself up, he shot an icy glare at nothing, steeled his nerves, and without purpose arched his shoulders with pretentious indignation.

"I don't believe it is any of your business what transpires behind the curtain, Kisaragi." He kept walking.

"Metaphors." She snarled, her smile warping into an exaggerated grimace. She wrung her fists in the air dramatically. "I _hate_ metaphors. An' you _know_ that I hate _them_. That's the _worst part_."

"Yuffie hush." Vincent spoke, his patience thin. If they continued walking like this, they were bound to reach the gates along the east border. And then what? Walk in the opposite direction again?

"Why do you wear black?"

"…Eek?"

"Why do you wear black? As a rule? I mean, there are a variety of colors, but you seem to prefer a mixture of black—and some red." _My god, we're down to trivialities…_

"Black is a good palette for morbidity." Vincent replied quietly. "It is also an irreverent color on the living—one seems to be in defiance of the blackness of death, or partly embracing it. Since I am not quite dead nor am I living, I saw this as adequate raiment to metaphorically conclude my worldly allocation."

"That's parley." Yuffie snorted, her eyes slanting slightly. "You only wear black so you don't have to think about clothes in the morning. I mean; black goes with _everything_. Even white. Especially white. I mean, look at you…you're _damn_ creepy white, Vin. An' red works right in, too. It's vampire-like. Occult. _Sexy._" Vincent straightened his posture briskly as she purred these last syllables. 

"It's symbolic." He murmured coldly, taking on the voice that belies emotions like a wet brick. "Nothing more, nothing less, and especially…nothing…romantic." "Antiquarian" he could hear Yuffie mumble underneath her breath, but that suited him to a sufficiency. He was antiquarian, and dejection was the medal that those who lived so long as he usually bore, although their limbs rarely were in keeping with his. After all, Cid was still wetting his mattress and playing with wooden trains when Vincent was interred in a pathetic ruin of a crypt. 

As a joke once (they were all _stupid_, he reminded himself again), Cid had given Yuffie a tip; never annoy your superiors, you never know what may come of it. The response was Yuffie hitting him as fiercely as she could, and somehow, Vincent could respect that dedication, however bemused he was by it at the time. After all, it was one of the few things that a Turk ever had to hang on to. Turk. His shoulders slouched unhappily and his pensive gaze switched to focusing on air, on the nothing that was in it. The entire world, it seemed sometimes, was a shadow; a vapor wreathed in light and reflected color. A stupid triviality, really, just smoke and mirrors, illusory, a masque, a desolate locus covered by a smear of what some might call reality, the reality labeled by beings who could ascribe little else to it, who dimly lived in the myopic world—the center of illusion. _You really mustn't be so-o mordant, Vincent Valentine._ He seethed at the little voice of Cloud Strife still trapped in his memory. As if the fearless leader truly had anything to cling to, after Aeris' death. It was ironic really how hypocritical the persona replete with apothems of sincere idiotic hope became when he finally completed the quest, not that anyone had noticed the complete look of determined forsaking of life on his face. Vincent had lived in a realm between life and death; as a Turk he had been a magic user, and a sharpshooter, and neither roles had the time for dalliance in thought; a mistake had gotten him killed, after all, so naturally notions arose faster than they did before his…curse of transcendence. Sharpshooters were naturally _terribly_ acute, even the ones with emotional baggage. So he sensed something, something amiss, something askance en cue with Cloud's personality, and these presumptions were admittedly only based on account. He left alone, and disconnected with Tifa, who was personally and externally very linked to the overall composition of Cloud. He didn't say goodbye. He disappeared. 

Not only was this the case but the intuit of the Turk didn't even need to emerge for him to understand how it was that he suffered now from what he codified the uncontrolled tempers. Jenova cells generally reacted strangely when something of their own is engendered, or when it meets an interesting case of transubstantiation. 

Vincent paused, very suddenly, and Yuffie felt a knot in her chest, and a cold wave of sickness pass over her. _Oh_ _Leviathan…don't let him do this, not here, not now. They'll…they'll probably kill him. They _will_ kill him…_

"Vincent?" Clarion and serendipitous as it was, her tinny little voice squawked now with mounting hesitation and fear, as if she wanted to be delivered from something. Vincent shut his eyes, his expression grave, and Yuffie gaped in his silence.

"I…I suppose it couldn't hurt to tell you what I've felt, these past…it's been going on seven months I suppose." Yuffie drew nearer, ready to banish her anticipation with what was an unsolicited sentence, but still made all the difference in her world. _Three little words_, she pleaded, her eyes round shimmering pools of longing. _Just three little words…_ They were indeed, three words that Vincent spoke next. However, they lacked promise.

Vincent sighed; dipping his head forlornly, as if confiding this in her did little overall good:

"Cloud is dead."


	2. ImbroglioContinued from where it left of...

Another portion of an endless chapter…at least one of you should fear it…the story gets exponentially worse, and Cloud is dead—no bluffing. Just blundering. 

"It was well said of a German book that '_er lasst sich nicht lesen_'—it does not permit itself to be read. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and them piteously in the eyes—die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not _suffer themselves_ to be revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of a man takes up a burden so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only in the grave. And thus the essence of all crime is undivulged." –"The Man of the Crowd", by Edgar Allan Poe

Homily for the Passant

_I am criminal, vain, apathetic, uncontrollable, flawed…the nadir of the human conceit. I am denied even when I am palpable; I am a contagion due to ignorance. I lavish the mists surrounding the dark in the recidivistic dark, the grain and the marrow of your worst entity. I salt the wounds; I apply camphor to the senses afterward, I keep ascending and descending the staircases you lock away for fear of falling into them. I am bliss. I am oblivion. I am the key to the kingdom of the downed. I keep your fear, I linger in its groves, I am it, and you are all me, in the end. _

_You will love me… as you fall. You will fall in time, in time with my rhythm, in time with my ticking. In time, my devices are yours, your elegy is mine to behold, and the walls are impenetrable where you perne._

_Blue eyes shimmered in the dark, the dim, featureless dark. Gold like the jewels of Geats long perished clung to a surface, highlighted the long fair hair with speckles of precious light, light from a dark lantern, the handle of which was branding into a slender palm wrapped in black wool. _

_"Hiding?" The voice had an acicular quality, like a splinter impressed into the derma. Whoever this form was, he leaned far enough away from the light to make the subject suspect that he too was hiding something. The lantern bearer's voice was recognizable anywhere, and yet…so different…far more brisk, far more openly exacting, than the other one's murky, impersonal tone._

_                "How, how did you know that I would be here?" The blonde inquired. His voice was very thin, suggesting the troubled sleep that was aggressively accosting him. If his face had come into view, it would have had an unhealthy glow to it. _

_                "By eliminating the places where you wouldn't find solace, which was everywhere else." The other replied. The blonde, head down against his hands, which were resting on a bended knee, looked up from underneath his shaggy eyebrows, his limpid, ether-infused eyes searching for the acid, and the brilliance, of the other's stare. He found nothing of his companion in the darkness._

_                "You've shut your eyes? Aren't you the strange one? Tell me, why is it so hard for you to swallow? You've been avoiding this arrangement like the plague, since I brought it up…" _

_                "The ramifications of your upcoming mistake…" _

_                "I know what I am doing." The blonde interrupted tersely, eyes severe. He heard something of a sigh, which sent him into a swift and uncompromising rancor._

_                "You had made the mistake, never hearkening a bloody thing your inner voice told you, until it was too late. And now you declaim the reasoning of my heart? What a blockhead."_

_                "Even so, if this is how you deem the consternation of someone who knows…"_

_                "What do you know?" The blonde blurted, cocking his head to the side. The response never came._

_                "I thought as much." Muttered the blonde, a tinge of triumph in his voice._

_                "The heart does not reason." The other said finally, and tore away from the wall. A red eye opened in the darkness, seeming to span it. _

_                "Yours doesn't do it well enough, you mean, for you to bother listening to it." The blonde concluded. Something of a sigh again, and he giggled evilly, trying to push away the simple-minded fool that had come to help him. _

_                "I am led by the goal to destroy a life, a life I poorly chose to love and pity all at once." The red-eye spoke, ignoring the sniggering. Another daunting red eye opened, fractured in the dark by strands of longish hair. _

_"After that, come what may. Yet you…"_

_                "Don't lecture me on my life, old man—I know how to live it. I know where I want it to end." And the red eyes sparkled in anguish, and later, over a pool of blood, reflected._

_                Cloud you arrogant, foolhardy clown._

Ditherers Dithering

"I…I just can't believe it." She murmured, looking up at him from behind a frosty glass. Her dark hair fell over half her full moon face, blocking the right corner of her lips from view.

"Believe it." Reno asserted flatly, his palm theatrically flesh against the table. His sunglasses were down, shielding his eyes. The ruddy bridge of his nose protruded out from under them in a fairly amusing manner. 

They sat at a mahogany colored booth near the door in a public restaurant whose tiled floor obviously hadn't been swept in weeks. Tifa had a cardboard menu before her. Reno had the worn-out diary. Reno's windblown hair of carroty misery was brushed mostly out of his face, cleared for the two sharp brown peaks of his eyebrows; and his face had this dried out, drawled out look; the kind that one has in the desert after days of exploration reveals that, indeed you were sidetracked in that last windstorm by about three miles, the oasis is many moons away, and all your camels have died. It was a teak-faced expression that Tifa had come to identify with chain smokers, as it also tended to appear on Cid a lot. Her mouth formed a small ring of trepidation.

"So this means, then, that someone _else_ was involved with ShinRa at the time?" She shook her glass, and the runny, arsenic contaminated ice cubes in it tinkled. 

"Yeah." Reno submitted patiently, "Ever hear of Michailho Hiraldo Zinfandelvic?" 

"Who?"

"An old researcher from Bugenhaggen's century. He was obsessed with the possibilities of converting anti-matter into materia, but he also did biochemical research on the side. Let me put it this way;" Reno extended his hands across the table, resting his knuckles on the book, "Zinfandelvic adamantly believed that you could do more than just Corpus Synthesis—that materia could be converted into a living form, could have an _avatar_, so to speak, and had constructed some synthesis for it. Now, the equations are complex beyond imagining—I had Rude working them out as sort of a gag gift one year—but anyway, Zinfandelvic's _formula_ was somehow contributed to the Jenova Project. I'd like to know how this happened, why these transactions took place. Et cetera. And I'll probably need your help to do it."

"I don't understand." Tifa replied, shaking her head. Reno inhaled deeply, prepared to reiterate once more with as much patience as humanly possible.

"Well you see it's like this…"

"No-no-no. Stop treating me like an idiot Reno! What I don't _understand_ is why you need my help at all. Couldn't you just backtrack the Jenova research files through Rude's connection with the Neo-Midgar government?" Her eyes were gamine and hauntingly questioning. There was a sparkle to them that made even the deepest luster of brown in them seem as crystalline as a teardrop. Reno was suddenly seeing an entirely new vision of the woman he had formally thought of as a rough and tumble sexpot.

"Yes, Tifah, but you see I need help."

"Don't condescend me Reno! Help with what? I thought you were a _Turk_." She shrugged, hitting the proverbial nail on the head, and drank from the ice water in her vessel.

"I thought you didn't _need_ help." The words flew out of her mouth with spitting bitterness. Reno's mouth flung open in protest.

"Now who's condescending?" He grabbed for the bottle of bourbon he had ordered, and sampled it daintily before taking a long swig. Tifa shook her head as he wiped his lip on his sleeve.

"What?"

"You're _repulsive_, Reno."

"Yeah. But at least I have common sense to look for some help when I need it." Tifa gave him a painful look and murmured something under her breath before she bolted from the table. Sighing, he paid the approximate value of the fare, stuffed the diary and the bourbon into his jacket, and stalked after her. Tifa hefted her weight against the door angrily as he calmly walked toward her, but the door would not budge.

"Damn it!" She wailed to herself. "Of all the times it would have to jam!"

"Tifa," Reno broached softly, observing the flaw in her logic. 

"Fucking door…"

"Tifah." He spoke a little louder this time, and she twisted toward him sharply.

"What!" Her eyes had all of the panic of caged wildlife, and she was, in a sense, gnawing her own leg off to struggle free, in the same manner in which she had gnawed away at her psyche until there was barely anything left to chip loose.

"…It says 'pull', Tiff." And he smiled, suddenly curious.

"Hey, what is Tifah short for anyway? Tiffany?" Tifa gave him that look again, only this time she was seriously wounded and gravely tormented by what he said, or rather, that he hadn't apologized.

"It doesn't mean anything!" She closed her eyes as she spoke, turned her head away and cupped her face in her hands. Reno, moldering in her self-pity, had reacted too late. With a graceful tug of the door handle, she had found a way to stumble madly into the streets. Slipping through the crack she had left him he accosted her; even fresh out of the restaurant he could hear her sobbing. She stood there, her long dark hair lying flat against her black miniskirt, pressing her eyes against the cloth around the back of her wrist. Reno reached into his waist pocket for the miserable bloodstained rag that served as his handkerchief. It had been a gift from Tseng, may whatever rest his soul, and Reno hadn't the heart to throw it out when the man died. After all, he wasn't just a superior; he was a brother; part of the fraternal order of city hit men. 

"Hey…um. Tifah…?"

"What?" She snapped; her immense eyes slammed wide open and dribbling profusely. The lids were swelling, reddening.

"Here." Reno tossed her the pathetic scrap. Tifa sniffled, and wiped her eyes, dabbed, and then held the rag out from her, as if she were reading a note.

"What…" sniffle "…what's this?" Sniffle. Blink. 

"What?"

"These…brown splotches…"

"Oh." Several seconds elapsed.

"Tseng's blood."

"Gods Reno!" She tossed the scrap back at him, her expression virulent. Reno lifted it up off of the ground, rubbing specks of gravel and moisture out of it. _If I were soppy, like that crappy bastard Cloud, I'd probably cherish this forever._ _Hell_. He crumpled the handkerchief and stuffed it in his pocket. _Forever is what you make of it, isn't it?_

Joy Riding

Barret grinned menacingly at the mortified young man beside him.

"Cin't you do better'n this, boy?"

"Um. Not in this jalopy. Um…I mean that. I mean it's the truth. Er…" Barret looked around the small compartment they were riding in, and then out the windows, which gave him a moderately good view of the commute for his size. Midgar was a broadband stretching out over a paved cement highway—and it spilled over everything, dendritically.

"Eight months." Barret murmured, a sliver of jealousy creeping into his voice. "Damn. _In eight months._"

"S'mazin' what people'll do for work, shelter, an' decent housing not…slums. Um." The icebreaker, Tsun realized, was a failure. Barret glowered at him with a might that had, in past circumstances, made the cockatrice try to scrabble their way under rocks, brush, _anything_. 

"Nothing personal…um. _Pleasedon'tkillme_." Barret simmered to himself and leaned as far back as mesomorphically possible as to provide a little ease on the youth's nerves. _Heh, it worked_, Tsun thought. He was desperately trying to act professional, even though he had been practically taken hostage (after all, he had consented to drive to where his employer normally operated). Truth be known, he never knew what branch Rude took to these days, only that he still sent him a daily bulletin and a paycheck, which meant that virtually, Tsun was employed. Virtually, the Turks had employed the boy at all of their major buildings, and this did not aid his comfort any. People in the city could employ you for a dime, sell you for a nickel, and execute you for a dollar bill without any regards to your welfare or comport (Which is why they shot you, it occurred to Tsun). 

Of course, this was a ravenous, dissolute town. That was _why_ there was immigration; that was _why_ there were police. Aside from the neighborhoods and buildings, which were made of thick daub or concrete or a recombinant amalgamation thereof, government buildings had steel and aluminum frames, and were hard, everlasting structures with sparse carpeting therein and little chance of really becoming trodden down in a couple of years; there were the ubiquitous overlords working behind the scenes, trying to sway the economy with an unforgivable gluttony for opulence. Therefore, his task was public defender. It was noblesse oblige to protect the communities from the apparent threat of disorder. Tsun stole a glance from the highway back to Barret, as he frequently had been doing in an attempt to monitor the man's emotions. It was times like these when the world seemed out of focus. 

The municipals of the world, universally, wherever they may be, are incensed at the slightest league beyond their intentions, the outreaches beyond their understandings, and are loath to be placed in such a position. 

"Tch. Cin't kill you when I need your sorry ass, now can I?" It hadn't really occurred to Tsun until now that Barret could actually think. His size, and the outlandish equipage of weaponry only suggested a berserker with the mental capacity of dishwashing detergent. But, as they always say, appearances can be deceiving. It was a malediction on him, he supposed, that the shoulders of Barret Wallace were castles to, in comparison, Tsun's river stone-sized body. His five-eleven in height seemed microscopic in comparison to Barret's _fist_. Still, Barret _could_ think, which meant, hopefully, that he could also be reasoned with.

"That's right." Tsun agreed, his floppy hair bobbing until his braid was caught in his seatbelt. 

"You can't…kill me _yet_." Barret's jaundiced eyes looked to be weighing this prospect. Again, there was unwelcoming silence between them, as renowned terrorist and current hostage shifted right onto the turnpike leading toward East Village.

"D'you…_doyouhaveanyfamily_?" Tsun's red eyeballs seemed to propel straight out of his head, and when he blinked, he blinked again to make sure they hadn't prolapsed. Barret tilted his massive head to one side and snorted rather softly to himself. His glare had almost dissolved into a harsh gaze.

"Yeah. I got my daughter Marlene. …Daddy's perfict lil' doll." Tsun mentally swerved the wheel, veering off the turnpike and dashing the car to pieces. 

"Daughter?" He croaked, his eyes intently focused on the world to any outward glance, but the bow-shaped quirk in his lips animated his surprise. An eyebrow forked its way up into his hairline, where his scalp had creased. 

"Yup. When you git right down to it, girls is the best kind of kids to have. Marlene's an angel herself, y'know?"

"I…wouldn't know. _ButpleaseItakeyourwordforit!_" Barret's brow had crumpled half in contempt, half in worried consideration.

"You 'bout to stroke yourself out or somethin', boy?"

"No." Tsun replied quickly, doing his best to drive and simultaneously wrestle an occlusion. 

"Then take it like a man!" Barret bellowed. Tsun was putridly white, and was doing his best not to close his eyes.

"Um. Talk to me. It might help." He suggested weakly. 

"Help what?"

"My…my _damn_ driving." Tsun replied. There. He said it. But he felt little machismo for it. Barret just stared at him like a beta in a bowl with a strange and disturbing new interest in that which is going on outside of its day-to-day parameters.

"Sure." He responded, eerily enough to send another chill sprawling down Tsun's spinal column. "What 'bout, exactly?"

"How about your daughter?" Tsun supplied. Barret, having an abundance to indulge him with, nodded in consent.

"Well, she's a little thing, my Marlene."

"How old?"

"Four. Thereabouts. We come from Corel, y'know."

"Mines?"

"…Yes. ShinRa an' I, we go a _long_ way back." Barret's dark eyes glimmered reflectively and he put his fist to his chin.

"They took her from me. Fo' a while."

"Sorry to hear that…what happened to your wife?"

"She, she died. ShinRa took her from me as well." 

"Terrible."

"That's what it is." Silence prudently settled over them, and Tsun swallowed the mucus that had balled up in his throat. Really too much anxiety wasn't good for a person, even if action was part of the whole defense image.

"So how is Marlene holding up? This is a…er…blooming big city for such a little girl."

"She ain't here."

"What?"

"Didn't wanna have t' bring her here. Business was gonna be short, an' I don't like the place. Yer right. It's too big fo' a lil' child. So I left her with her…" He thought of a word to describe Mrs. Gainsborough.

"…Grandma." 

"Oh?"

"Mother's side." Barret explained, nodding.

"That's why she's white." He added. Tsun shrugged.

"Makes no difference to me. I think you know what's best for her." 

"You don't think I'm being a bad parent?" Barret asked warily. Tsun rapidly shook his head, but fear hadn't compelled him so much this time.

"No. Hardly! I wish my mom and dad had given me as much thought!" Tsun shrugged, a slight frown crossing his face.

"Foster parents. We never really got on that well, especially with my dad. He was in the researching department with ShinRa. My…stepmother was Wutain, but not, you know, Wutain. I think she thought she was doing the best for me, bringing me to Midgar, teaching me to lose Wutainese, to shirk the ways of the people. Yeah…she thought it was very…modern of her." This was the closest Tsun had come to truly sounding _angry_, not simply annoyed, but fed up with people in the bureaucratic system of government and the society that punctuated _modernization_.

"So, y'liked bein' Wutain?" Tsun ignored the ostensible stupidity of the question and took it as a gesture of good faith.

"I was _four_. I can't really remember if I _liked_ it. It's just that; I work with a lot of the Wutains living here, and at least one of _them_ would've given me some chance to really _experience_ different walks of life, not just flat out chosen it _for_ me. I don't remember what Wutai even looks like, and when I look at Wutain script…" Tsun blinked, as if trying to quell his disconcertion, and he probably was.

"I just have an identity crisis. I've been to group. They say that happens a lot with adopted kids. But see, none of them are old enough to remember when they were orphaned, to remember being treated like…like a toy. Or a pet. That sort of thing. You obviously seem to treat Marlene at least like she's your _daughter_." Barret's expression froze in a puckered grimace.

"How did you know she wasn't mine?" He asked, staring dead at Tsun's profile. The Turk shrugged.

"Lucky guess. That, and calling your mother-in-law, or your own _mother_ you know, dot-dot-dot, "Grandma" in your manner just seemed, y'know, _distant_. I'm assuming it's a family friend." Barret sat back with the mixed look of contentment and pain of a person who has stuffed himself at Christmas. 

"Damn." He grunted. "They really train you people _good_ these days. That Reno, from where I come from, didn't know his head from his ass. Damn foo' wouldn't give up, either, and he know we had him beat. His persistent ass jest kept showin' up."

"That's our kind for you." Agreed Tsun. _He really hates my kind. Oh, Leviathan…he's so going to kill me._

"Yep. Jest a bunch o' overpaid crazies." _And what have I accomplished with my life? I haven't even been on a date, not once! Not to mention the fact that I work after hours for a bunch of medical madmen and mad researcher stereotype scrape-offs and scabs…_

"…Drive, you frickin' fool!" Tsun looked up to see the headlights of the other lane bearing down on them, and turned the wheel. Still, they were almost sideswiped.

"Lost yer frickin' presence o' mind?" Barret grunted angrily.

"Something like that," Tsun breathed.

Nepenthe

Yuffie was heavily besotted, her body slumped over the martini glass with paramount commitment to finishing it, though she had recently fallen asleep with her body contorted so that her arms draped carelessly over her head, her lace covered fingers still clutching at a straw gleaming like Excalibur projecting from a rubble of ice. She burbled something unintelligently as he shifted her arms, soft and delicate as they were, and pulled her sagging body off of the glass tabletop, dragging it toward him. He knew he shouldn't have let her absorb her shock this way, but she was angry and her nerves were shot, and there was no sense trying to reason with Yuffie Kisaragi when she was determined to get smashed, especially if you concurred at the time on what a wonderful idea it was. 

The aftereffects, however, were often long lasting and, as far as Vincent's ecumenical knowledge went, hazardous to her brain cells. 

"You've had enough." He barely added from refraining, under his own intoxication, "you stupid girl."

"Mm-hm-ghah." Yuffie slurred, tossing her head forward weakly. She was debilitated, but fortunately weightless.

"What was that?" He murmured back without hope of clarification. He had heard somewhere before that it was always best to keep a conversation going with a drunk, although he could no longer consider the wisdom of the long-forgotten source. Yuffie nuzzled faintly against his coat and seemed to be humming in a small, throaty voice that insisted the golden age. 

"Yuffie?" Her eyes had been closed. They opened to reveal raw, swollen purple flesh, excessive gloss, and two pairs of black and white that vaguely resembled two corneas with a pupil and an iris each. Yuffie blinked, and her eyes cleared, tears streaming down her face as she shuddered—guffawing—for no reason.

"Steel. Hmph. Anywaygnuiifyouwannaget away…with talkingtomelikethat…" She smiled up at him from an intoxicated dream world, completely nauseated, but far removed from expectoration for the time being.

"S'louder'nbustashun."

"Where?" Vincent was certain he had deciphered it correctly, but was beginning to loose his enthusiasm for the rumbling little slurs. 

"Here." In the gloomy little bar there was merely silence, an unobtrusive bartender, and the two present customers manifested as a paradoxical ninja reprobate and a walking corpse. Vincent sighed, brushed a lock of sweaty hair from her face, and clamped her hand slightly to prevent her from reciprocating by rubbing the inside of his coat lining. The barkeeper looked up silently, to with sudden regret meet the lock-concealed profile of Vincent's placid, cold expression. The portly man glanced away and rubbed a chubby hand on his black tee.

"Er…I know it's not my business, but is she _really_ older'n twenty one?" The man did not turn around, but he _felt_ the cold stare.

"You doubt her word?" Vincent asked, his voice like nails, but sleeker, like a flung icicle.

"…No. But if you don't mind my asking sir…"

"Yes?" The man bent low over a glass he was cleaning, rigorously wiping the towel across the surface.

"Is she…are you…what is a cop and a lady in thrown-together clothing doing in a bar at three fifty nine in the morning?" Vincent considered the question coolly, the alcohol he had downed affecting him as well. He tried to explain the situation to the manager drunkenly, but in the same tone as before.

"Trying to overcome her shock. You see; we lost a comrade, a while ago. I suspected he was dead. I didn't tell her. She's currently hopping furious with me, but she doesn't want to be angry because I'm the only person she has left. A terrible pity for her at least—she's young, foolish—nubile, but something germs within her—she blossoms. I, on the other hand, have tried to end my life. …I cannot die, because I was in love, and a researcher, the unfortunate lady's husband, decided that watching me hanker for all eternity was more amusing than blowing my bloody brains out." With this, Vincent made a slight gesture with his index finger toward his temple, creating a ludicrous sound effect. 

"And…and that's why my eyes glow and why she thinks I'm attractive in the first place, and if she tries something again I'll probably wind up sucking her blood or something, or maybe just eviscerating her and drinking the bile of her organs… something like that. She does grow on you, after a while—it is something she cannot help. It would be to my chagrin to harm her." 

"…Quite often, she also wears these interesting black tops without sleeves, held up by her bust, I guess, so they're not exactly held. It is really rather silly, but she likes them. The…I don't know the name of them…cut-off thingies." He seemed satisfied with the information divulged, and quieted down again.

From the bartender's perspective, the drunkard seemed uncharacteristically thoughtful, and had smiled too much, and too faintly, at much of what he had said. Anyone drinking at four o'clock in the morning without transport arrangements and with a mentality of either one of them was up to no good, meant to be miscreant in some way. But the bartender had a philosophy like an inner city medical doctor's—treat 'em and street 'em. Don't linger on what they'll _do_ afterward. _Fair enough_, he thought, looking back to the longhaired Vincent, holding the wasted, skinny girl near the proximity of, but not exactly on, his chest. She was falling out of the seat, and in a stupor he was attempting to secure her. 

_Don't let 'em wind up inexplicably dead on your premises._

"Would either of you like a cab home?" He wondered, peering at the young people through the faceted contours of a spotless glass.

"We're new…here. There isn't a place for us to go." The young man explained, his hair sliding out of his face, revealing sharp eyebrows and a crescent of an eye as blood red as laburnum on an autumn morn. The bartender turned fully on him, a cold chill numbing him from head to foot, and it remained; his left arm became dead weight. The girl had been ordering most of the glasses…the other one had been sitting in the booth, head turned away, watching her. Eyes punctured by the malaise, the youth looked down. 

"Your eyes…they're red." Pain was pervading his body, wracking up on his spine, strangling him. Perspiration clung to his face. 

"Bloodshot eyes are very common after the consumption of alcohol, aren't they?" Almost ready to receive such logic, the bartender nodded, and struggled for breath. A different kind of fear sparked into the little man's eyes.

"Uh, they don't… usually _come_ in that… shade." The bartender groped at his chest in unbelievable agony, dropping the glass. Its shards pillowed his doughy frame as it fell backward into them with a spasm. 

"We are going, so you needn't concern yourself too much." Vincent murmured, and then looked up. The words of relief, Vincent realized, had arrived to late to afford any consolation to the poor man.

"Damn it!"

Tamed Fauve Humdrum

By eleven o'clock that morning Tifa and Reno were heading for Neo Midgar. Reno had received a phone call from Rude at the hotel, where he had convinced Tifa to stay for the night. Like a gentleman, although he admittedly refused such a silly predication, he had slept in the lobby on a beaten leather couch with a newspaper over his face. The girl of his dreams woke him up promptly at six o'clock, having nudged him onto the floor with the aid of the receptionist when verbal invocations failed. The floor itself was cold, dry, and, to his semiconscious sentiment, perfect bedding. It took a sharp and relatively painful kick in the shin to keep him alert enough to drink coffee and pocket a ticket stub while boarding a noisy steam powered train.

"Barret…" Tifa's blood was boiling, even a man recovering from a duty free shop and seemingly innocuous coffee could apprehend it. Still, it was amazing how these little denouements carried out amongst AVALANCHE. In one surprising miracle, they could all have the same objective, and were almost renown for collecting in one area faster than mako. That is, after all, why they thought they could compress them all underneath a city plate—"Snowball Pizza"—that had been the joke around the office at the time. _What sick bastards we were. _Perhaps he mulled too openly.

"We did what we had to back then!" The panic in her voice was rising, and her dark eyes flared. When Reno had informed her of Barret, she had forced him to take her home so that she could obtain equipment necessary for their voyage. It didn't take much imagination now to see what she had stored in her bag—for one thing; it was curved and also gleamed of metal. She had packed materia as well, guising it poorly as a necklace. It was amazing how dense customs could be if the woman looked nice enough, and smiled as if there was no trouble at all. On the other hand, Reno considered that any attempts to disarm Tifa were being left up to someone "dense".

"I can't believe him!" Her voice took on a catlike screech. From his unfortunate seat beside her, Reno was trying to gather if every member of AVALANCHE was required to be bipolar as well. _Yesterday, a complete, if somewhat confused and depressed young woman, today a brooding banshee._

"I just—can't! He _knew_ something was happening. He _knew_, and the only reason I found out about it is through affiliation with a bloodthirsty government licensed _criminal_!"

"Watch it."

"Sorry, Reno." _I've just apologized to a mass murderer_, Tifa thought in astonishment. _Dear world, what am I?_

"Well, you're not just another pretty face," Catching Tifa's glare, Reno distanced himself tactfully and tried not to look at the broadcasts of her countenance. This was no time to be arguing with a suicidal girl who blamed him for the death of a whole community. 

"You have a lot more hoist in the mental department than I'd ever thought I'd give you credit for."

"Sheesh, Reno. Is trying to fornicate with every woman you meet _all_ you ever think about?"

"Just about, when I'm off duty."

"Mother of pearl." Tifa shook her head, just to articulate her disgust a little further.

"Not to try to make amends here, but it's not like I killed for game or the sheer fun of it." Reno ventured, pressing his hands together firmly. "I'm not apologizing here, but we were defin'ally some pretty sick punks."

"For the love of Cloud Strife!" She stood up, her hair swaying with the movement of the train. Other people had been sleeping, or reading newspapers, or listening to music. Even as she tried to poise her mood, the atmosphere went unchanged. Reno, however, was rapt in the tirade, and was now staring ogle-eyed at the young woman. She even used his name as if he were some secret holy figure that only she could take advantage of. She said his name, his blessed name, _in vain_. Now she was staring off into space, fists balled, counting down from a hundred. Heedlessly, he made an attempt to squeak out a few words of comfort, only to be met with her knuckles several inches from his face. A somnolent old man in a raincoat happened to look up over his newspaper idly, but unconcerned with these paltry affairs returned to the more intriguing realm of the obituaries. Reno looked a little on the rabid side when Tifa had lurched toward him.

"Don't play stickball with me Tifah." He snarled, his lip quivering. His sunglasses shaded his eyes and his intents, but his tone was menacing. This was a man who had unhesitatingly deployed several rounds into men without even flinching a muscle as blood sprayed his face. This was a woman, however, who had survived a cut from the finest swordsman in history, and she, unlike Reno, had never run from a challenge. Eventually, the former Turk relented, and began staring off into space. Tifa, after a lapse, fell back into place by his side.

"Look, I'm sorry; let's just put our differences aside?"

"Bygones _were_ bygones, Tifah," Reno spat with bitter acrimony. Tifa's bosom heaved desperately.

"I'm…really sorry…I don't know…I'm just…so…so _emotional_." She sighed heavily and rearranged her seating posture so that she could effectively rest her chin on the palms of her hand and appear pitiful.

"Hell. It could be worse." Reno condoned, feeling inexpressibly wretched about her.

"Anyway, you're the most together person I know—next to Rude, although next to Rude, everyone looks like a basket case—including myself."

"Yeah." Tifa seemed to assent, interest in her tone. "I know what you mean. Barret; gods. What is he thinking? Or do you know that clown Cid? Yeah, he's a real mess, too. He's, well, cantankerous but actually rather nice, even though he thinks he's hot stuff—and doesn't think ahead for the most part. Funny thing though—I think he likes me."

"Or Elena—Elena would crumble to bits if you gave her a gun, but was surpassingly meticulous with paperwork."

"And Yuffie—I don't know if you met her but—she's a good kid and all but a complete snot if you get my drift. I don't know how that's possible, but she reminds me of a little sister. She stole most of the materia and…I still need to make up with her for exacting my original share of it, um, forcefully."

"And Tseng—couldn't find a bastard more corrupt," Reno almost stated this proudly.

"But I have a lot to think about, and I've hurt so many of my old friends. It's tragic, really. They could have helped to pull me out of this crisis if I didn't push them away. I mean, even Vincent seemed to care, and that's saying something—although you don't know _him_ at all, as he's a bit of a recluse and proffered his assistance primarily in word alone." She looked down at her hands thoughtfully. Reno had become rather quiet all of a sudden.

"Thank you, Reno. Ironic though, isn't it?" Tifa's eyes lit up in a poignant sparkle. Reno smiled, but it was a faraway smile, answering only that which still played on the surface of the world, but disconnected from any great spiritual depths Tifa was trying to achieve.

"You unite—like Jenova, you know." He said softly. With his head inclined as it was, his pitiful red hair swayed to and fro with the momentum of the train. 

"Cloud's going to be there; maybe."

"Hopefully." Tifa agreed, looking thoughtfully at Reno.

"I'll put in a good word with him, for you." His lips perked into a grin, and he seemed grateful.

"Thanks." _Like Jenova. Oi. Old Ren, Destiny is one hell of a bitch._

In the Lair of the Lions

                Cid was the absinth spoon, that extra bite to calamity that made things harder than they should have been. Had he not impugned the leader incessantly, had he not denounced the intelligence of all around him? Had he not listlessly followed his heart, and had he not been crushed by a massive, two-ton flotsam as the spaceship was losing integral capacity and being strewn apart in the gravitational currents of a large asteroid? 

                _Okay, so I'm an idiot_, he allowed, coiling his muscles in his arms. His body ached. There were no cigarettes in store for him, anytime soon, he hypothesized. The doors were obviously locked, even from this distance—the red light on the bar sort of denoted this fact. So he took to examining the room. Not much of revolutionary modification in the way of bedding—the mattress sagged inward, as if many a sanguine head had been acclimatized to it. The walls were not cozy, but a cold steel gray. He had made use of his fortune to introduce paneling to the interior of his ship—it made the walls homey and it destroyed the atmosphere of traveling in a metal box. Here, on a sheet of plain, starchy, abominable linen that hadn't been dyed and was so thin that the stitches were its only thickness he contemplated why he hadn't the forethought to walk away, instead of going forth. It certainly would have saved him the extent of burn damage he had recently received. Why bother to make it forth rather than back—was it to find out if Barret or anyone would raise the flags half-mast on account of him? 

                _Shit. This cell is making me think._

                "Hey! Can I get a little um…spatially dynamic, here, or something?" Cid yelled from where he lay, fettered with bandages. It occurred to him that his lip was partially enclosed within the plaster-reinforced wrappings. _Just who puts plaster on a burn wound, an idiot? Bet frickin' Barret looked after that. Wise ass. He's a medical Lilliputian. _

                "Hey! Someone! You #$%^&*@ know I'm even alive in here?" A charge of acid in his voice. The window glass resembled the kind people manufactured microwaves with. _Dear god…am I in some kind of nuclear testing area?_

                "Spartan living arrangements…not even a goddamn pillow…" His gaze met the window, where it followed an emerging shape. A bright red light flapped in front of the cross hatched glass and plummeted out of view. The hue of the door lock shifted to green, and, after some audible scraping, to fire-engine bright cadmium yellow. The lock sprung open, and, nudging it open with the flat of his muzzle, was Red Thirteen.

                "Hey, cat…" Cid murmured vaguely, his eyes glazing over in banished hope of that long craved-for cigarette. Red Thirteen eyed him curiously. 

                "Are we abetted?" His voice unmistakably carried no humor. Cid tensed, realizing that a loss of intonation in Red's pleasantries could mean a spare but important number of morbid things.

                "Hey, get your #$%^&*@ jolly on. It can't be that bad." Cid urged, inwardly spitting on Buggenhagen's grave. It wasn't fair, that such a practical, no-nonsense pilot had to talk to a woolly headed animal about critical issues.

                "I'm not a specialist on psychology or anything, but you seem to let your appetitive always get the better of you, disabling your betterment." Red announced glumly, and pattered closer with an indistinct aim.

                "Just what do you #$%^&*@ mean by that, leopard pants?" Cid sputtered, his neck growing hot with rage.

"…Just what I said."

"What you said?" _Hold in there, you &^%$%##$%^&*@ bastard and perhaps you'll get answers out of ole' Kimba. _Red Thirteen began to pace back and forth, his eye wandering. Just looking upon him was producing chills down Cid's aching, swollen neck. _Never mind. He's gonna eat me._

"I don't mean to deprecate but, there is a severity in our situation that you might have noticed. We're not permitted to leave the facility without permission from Zinfandel, and currently he's not here to provide it. So it seems we'll have to board until—whenever—he returns. These rules were quite explicit—they apply to you, Shera, myself…"

"Hold on," Cid interrupted, his mind thinking ahead of him for once. "What about Barrett?"

"He left yesterday with officer Tsun Den. I suppose they'll have arrived back by…sometime later this afternoon."

"This is an emergency!" Cid roared in his charming, impertinently sarcastic way.

"Well, I thought with your parameters that you should find this the paramount of suspicious protocol."

"Not really. Now go. And don't interrupt a man's sleep."

"Wouldn't you like to see Shera?"

"Shera? Hell no! That woman gives me creeps more than you! And that's a fact!"

"All right, then…"

"Wait!"

"…Yes?"

"If I go see Shera um…could I at least get a cigarette?" Red thirteen released a long, terrible sigh.

"Do whatever." He snapped, tail swishing miserably. Cid's mouth curled with obvious approval. 

"That's fantastic. I mean, the best that she's ever been good for." 

Lucent Thoughts

Doctor Trenton gamboled through the glistening white hallways whistling a folk tune, something that infallibly annoyed his coworkers, who were a strain of bacterium unbeknownst to him and typified by their demands for greater quantities of sleep. They were those he often described to himself as "idiots who burn the candle at both ends", as he rolled through with nearly a pot full to the brim with decaffeinated tea. 

"I smell the nectars of the morning in the air but the bees are weighted down by evening's dew." He remarked nastily, sidestepping a sudden vicious arc of papers.

"A most dangerous thing to do with a clipboard, Doctor Saides." Saides, a towering homunculus with a beard, gave him a withering stare and lumbered off. 

 "It feels _good_," Trenton said, smiling widely at the doors before him. "To _really_ get the blood moving again." He was a middle-aged man, tall, well kempt, with graying hair and a slight goatee. His colleagues unofficially referred to him as "Doctor Morningstar", and to the research wing he supervised "His black kingdom". It wasn't that Trenton was evil per se, but just because he delighted so much in being Doctor Trenton, and did so in such a purely blissful, nonchalant way that the circumstantial human mind would have no recourse but to hate him. Pushing open the lead gates to his black kingdom, his tea sloshing in his fist, the effervescent Trenton lifted his head to the harsh luminescence of the lamps. The research hall seemed more of a bunker than anything else.

"Good _morning_, gentlemen. I hope you slept soundly."

"Bin as much," Barret replied, scratching his head a little drowsily. Tsun was standing beside a water cooler, keeping off of the red line that separated items near the wall from the main, militaristic pathway. The air had a very subterranean feel to it. Tsun was drinking freezing water out of a paper cone he extracted, scanning the doctor's smile warily. Next to the deadbeat kid there was a bald giant, huskily built and clad in a sharp business suit. He was pensively toying with a pair of darkly shaded sunglasses. 

"Where's the party?" Rude rumbled finally, giving a lens a half-hearted flick.

"They'll be along shortly." Trenton announced. There were specialists to bring in, and, odd as it was to discover, Trenton's lab was the only governmentally funded research facility in Neo-Midgar. Doctor Zinfandel was running materia storage for the new ShinRa executive, who was much more practical than the last, and never admitted reported terrorists into his presence, nor those of any clearance. In fact, very few knew who even headed the new plant, merely that there was an operation underway, a city built, and several executives from different countries and administrations responsible for it. For those reasons, it was a city that could very well erupt into civil war at any given moment. 

Barret leaned back and picked at his collar. They had been at Zinfandel's base; the doctor was operating off a grant from a Junon company powered in the past by ShinRa loans. Now, they had come into Rude's midst, and Barret had only learned that lame-brained Tsun Fei Den worked for two very individual companies and the Wutain embassy as a detail officer. 

"…We've collaborated recently." It was Trenton's unmistakable quality of peppered noise, responding to one of Rude's softly, carefully intoned questions. _All of this is crazy. I'm prob'ly at square one agin'. An' I thought the ole' Shinra were mental midgets. I should have brought Cid, that crispy fool. At least he sort of gets this mumbo-jumbo._

"So, Zinfandel has uncovered something?" Rude inquired, drawing Barret out of his introspection.

"I sent it to you in the briefing." There was a tinge of pretentious deprecation in Trenton's cheery voice. Tsun glanced toward Barret, who was uncannily silent for the moment. _He's taking this all in, I suppose._ _Very organized, very Turk-like and professional. Let others ask the questions when you don't know what to ask. It all works out in the end._ Tsun was developing a very diffident but sincere admiration for Barret. 

"…I never read those things." Rude confessed sullenly. _Don't I know it_, the younger Turk thought with aggravated nerve. Trenton meanwhile had cocked his head to the side triumphantly. 

_"_Tch. Prissy lil' punk. Just tell us what we need to know—you ain't gotta act all purple 'bout it." Ignoring Barrett entirely, Trenton went on, a sliver of a smile on his lips that Barrett had badly wanted to erase with a fist. 

"Well it's like this; we excavated the ShinRa building two months back, found a couple fireboxes, some old file cabinets—you know—assorted _stuff_ regarding Hojo's research in Midgar, and we came across several cross references to some old experiments done for something known as the _Junon _Project. It only took a little gumshoeing in Junon's overly exploited research "depot" to come up with some stray names. Mick—Doctor Zinfandel, decided to lend us a hand. He had done research on material transcendence, called it a pipeline to another plane or something—the man's brilliant mind is failing—anyway, he talked about corpus synthesis, just rattled on about it for months. Doctor Sing Sing and I just kept laughing about it—Hojo had tried the experiment, and it failed."

"And then?"

"And then we found _her._ You know, the _mummy_. Beautiful specimen if you ask me—eighty three thousand years old—least that's what analysis of the geological strata told us. Carbon dating grew a little hairy insofar as when it came to properly judging her age, what with her being composed of very little carbon at all." 

"Wait a sec," Barret interrupted suddenly, chin to his fist. "You mean t' tell me you dug up some really _old_ chick, an' that's why Red Thirteen dragged us out _here_?" Doctor Trenton laughed a little too openly for Barret's comfort.

"More or less." Trenton agreed, a falsetto smile on his lips. "Nanaki is very fond of Mr. Zinfandel, but the old cretin really _is_ a loon. He just happened to be lucky, that's all. There's more, Mr. Wallace, than just that. Doctor Helsing, before she took leave to tend to her sick mother—brilliant chemist she was—well anyway she confirmed it. She wasn't a use to us anyway, really, as she's forsaken all of her priorities these past few months—hasn't even reported her progress with the journals she'd taken with her. Anyway, aside from that _disappointment_, I was led to a very obvious thing; that our glittering girl in permafrost is a product of corpus synthesis."


	3. More of itwhat else can one say?

Now I know I've lost my mind to the point of its unexpected return (sighs.) God-awfully long, this is true, but we're close to the real chapter three, now, and the flotsam is finally starting to lay on the water with noticeable components. 

Please, someone, ANYONE, just review this thing for me?????? I'll even take flames…I like burning!!!! Let me know that it's being read!!!!

"Honto kanashimi ga shiritai dake."—Yoko Kanno "The Real Folk Blues"

"It'd be a funny old world, if demons went around trusting one another."—Good Omens

Reclaiming Direction

Cid loped around on the rooftop, taking a casual interest in the steepness of the building. As was typical for the pilot, there was a cigarette planted between his teeth, and his grizzled eyebrows, growing back to their fullness remarkably fast, were knotted in a way that made him seem absorbed in deep thought. Nanaki reclined, letting the sunbeams lick his carmine back, his whiskers fanned out, receiving unintelligible signals from the cool air. 

"She looked…restful. Rest_ive_? _Resting_?" Cid muttered. By the tone, it could almost have been considered a reproach.

"Yes, I thought she seemed peaceful, also." Nanaki yawned, slapping his tail against the tar. Cid took to pacing—between the nicotine and the way that Nanaki lazed, instilling guilt; he had pent-up aggression to dispose of. 

"Heck, we all do, when we're like that." He scowled to himself, touching and retouching the cigarette. He finally ripped it away from his lips and unlit it, grinning uneasily.

"Think we should do something about it before Barret gets back?" He inquired of the great cat. Nanaki folded a paw underneath of his girth, and tensed his neck, rippling the mane and the muscles.

"Roll call." Cid growled impatiently. "One lion act…present and accounted for?" Nanaki tightened and shot Cid a glare before he shifted back onto his feet, scanning the pilot's face with his exhausted eye. As people go, Cid had a wild expression, but the burns only intensified the gruffness of the appearance.

"Yes, I think you should." Red replied tersely, throwing his body into a crescent shape. It was clear that he hadn't wanted to participate in this agonizingly useless concept of conversation—something of the air tickled his spine and reminded him of home. 

"I think I shall have a bit of a nap, if it's all the same to you, Highwind." Red murmured with a tone of irreverence as he snapped his eye shut. Glaring derisively at the recumbent lion, Cid shuffled his feet toward the steps. 

_I should've followed Barret's example_… he complained inwardly, the gist of his thoughts darkening his face. _For one thing, I wouldn't be on this first-rate merry-go-round of stupidity. And another,_ he continued, glaring over his shoulder at Red. _He wouldn't be getting me into more shit than I already deserve. _

"Uh…" Cid restrained himself from calling the creature "Wusspuss", which had been at the tip of his mind. "Red Thunder" might have had a similar negative reaction. 

"Yes?" Red reciprocated quickly; ready as ever to facilitate the needs of anyone, even Cid Highwind. _Reliability, that's what we're looking for in a man…too bad, 'cause there aren't any men eligible. Just this cat…and a croton…cretin. Hell, what's the difference anyway? _

Cid sighed heavily into his collar, the wind at his back ruffling the trailing ends of his coat. Thin ribbons of smoke level with his outstretched arm drifted on the air current. Disgusted with what the breeze was telling of him, he dropped the butt altogether and stepped on it. 

"Were you going to give me a preamble to go along with it?" Nanaki inquired, tail swishing. Red had an uncanny sense of timing.

"They're doing it again." Cid grunted, his worn out sky blue eyes burning with annoyance, frustration, and guilt for the lack of foresight. Nanaki perceived the slight change in the atmosphere surrounding him—the pilot boiled at an acceleration rate that matched his ship. The wasted energy that built up into Cid's personalized volcanic temper was an asset at times.

"Tell me, why? Is humanity that _stupid_?" The pilot turned into the wind, facing the guardian of Cosmo Canyon. He had never really taken it into account that the creature was at least a year his senior before, but Nanaki sat, prosaic, golden in the sunlight, the fur of his flanks blowing, reminding Cid of Rocket Town's abundance of meadow. For no reason apparent to himself, he wished to be home, listening to the teapot whistling, to a woman scraping burnt batter off of the frying pan and the neighbor kids practically scalping each other as they attempted to reach the door, each prepared with a humble request to copilot with the "grouchy old man that flies the pink plane". _Home. Yeah…but that's forgotten. Ancient history. Flyby memory crap._ _Me, I'm just the quintessential airman now…got places to go? Get Cid to transport you. Contribution, and all that… modus…operandi… _

"In the words of a previous colleague of ours, Cid, people are fallible. They strive…but do they ever really know where their lust leads them?" 

"Lust?" Cid wondered tensely, ducking his chin to his collar, leering over his sharp nose. 

"Greed." Nanaki explained patiently, twitching a hair. "Lust and greed are synonymous."

"Hell, that isn't why I cringed." The pilot admitted, flushing a little bashfully. His fingers grazed a bandage where his goggles would have been, and in obvious pain he retracted it.

"It's just that…hell, lusts aren't always mindless. Take me, for example—I'm one hell of a greedy bastard. Earlier today I bargained with you, you devil, just to obtain one measly cigarette—I went in and twiddled my thumbs over a woman I've known my entire life—just to dawdle up here on the roof, where earlier than that, she was so angry with me that she punched the lights out of some guy she didn't even know just to feel better, and we've always thought she was…you know…a pacifier." Then he shrugged, his lower jaw set in a frown. 

"So what are you getting at?" Red inquired gently, his tail swishing to and fro in anticipation. Grimacing with a carcinogenic lowliness Cid fingered the bandage again, despite the agony it brought.

"I'm a greedy son of a bitch." He breathed, smiling easily as he ran his fingers along the groove of gauze that to his instincts substituted for the elastic band of airman's goggles. 

"Now, instead of the cigarette, I want that woman downstairs back on her feet and the right to leave this goddamn building and to just have the relief of getting back on that $%^&*#@ airship and going back to Rocket Town and sleeping for fifty goddamn months under a goddamn roof my goddamn sucking father pitched when I was bleeding four, with her making tea and you and Barret and his daughter and every other goddamn person on this planet visiting any fucking time they wanted. Even Cait Sith; if the robotic bastard likes tea." Once expatiated, the words filtered slowly back into Cid's membrane, which, with all of his fussing over the bandages, was beginning to feel a little like meringue. He looked to Red—for anything of approbation, and the lion twitched his lips, as if attempting to smile. 

"I support it." Red replied, his tone suggesting that his happiness was barely contained. Cid found himself again without a cynical edge, and collapsed into relief with a laugh, followed by a wheeze.

"I do actually have permission to come over whenever I like?" Nanaki rejoined, holding his head up in the naïve manner of a dog. The tail swished behind him anxiously, the ball of fire on the end sweeping across the tar, generating little puffs of smoke. Cid regarded him for a moment, and nodded.

"So long as you drink tea and not my blood, I think we'll be fine with each other. That, and don't get too close to the furniture with that thing."

"My caudal appendage?" Nanaki once more attempted to stretch his cheek muscles for the hominid expression of diplomacy. Cid confirmed with a touch of his forefinger to his brow, and the two broke into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. 


End file.
